In the British Army right up until the late 19th Century, Officers were expected to buy their commissions and fund their campaign expenses from private income.

In theory, the difference between the officer and the soldier is the officer is a professional manager of violence, whereas the soldier applies it. There is relatively little difference between leading a squad as a sergeant does and leading a platoon as a lieutenant, but he differences in the duties of a sergeant-major and a colonel are quite significant, though both may have twenty years and more in the service.

Deadbeat; And that was apparently where those rare few from the ranks types hit the wall. They lacked the funding to buy into the system. I recall reading it was popular and common for the commissions to be traded and solid like a common commodity.

The Other Wiki has a long article about the purchase of commissions In the British Army.

In the US there is the ROTC program, a college scholarship with an officer commission upon graduation.

Saw that. I read something a bit more complex where a few cases were laid out that certain commissions at certain points were traded or sold as political favours for example.

You might be interested in this if you haven't read it yet. Basically pushing for EW capability to increase as a means of defeating future missile threats.

I'm psyched about that. EW is seen as unglamorous work, and frequently underappreciated, but it's absolutely crucial. Good EW work saved the USN and USAF a lot of pain in both WWII and Vietnam. At its best, it's the equivalent of blanketing a battlefield in smoke, except you can see through it an your opponent cannot.

The life of a US Army Infantryman.

Marines end IOC Experiment No females passed the course and it seems pretty much all of them washed out at the Combat Endurance Test except one and none finished the entire course.

The door factory one had me laughing in the middle of a library

I get the feeling that Europe will only start defending itself, when the US no longer will.

...and that is getting increasingly likely.

I wonder if we'll see the reintroduction of conscription in Western Europe, at least in limited form, due to the current situation.

...I can now imagine hundreds of thousands of soldiers sharing their tales of irritation.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/phillippines-us-marine-joseph-pemberton-murder-transgender-jennifer-laude/

Trial of PFC Pemberton has already started. So far, NCIS may have to testify according to local reports.

A US soldier has been killed in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, reportedly after being fired upon by an Afghan soldier in an "insider" attack.

Is there a consensus on whether all infantry positions should be open to women?

General consensus amongst people who have served/are serving seems to be if they can pass the existing physical requirements, why not?

Violence Manager is one hella name for a Thrash Metal band.

This is pretty much the current Military Spending thinking in a nutshell

The Israelis tried using mixed sex units. They dropped the idea after the casualty rates among the unit skyrocketed compared to regular units because male soldiers were taking unnecessary risks to protect their female peers.

And then there is this PoV article about a female marine officer over females serving in combat roles

Maybe break the units down so that it's mostly females with female and vis versa?

My earlier post is going by people I've talked to and is in no way factual beyond that.

edited 8th Apr '15 4:02:53 PM by Joesolo

European military defense spending increases and women in combat are two hot button topics, so we've got a twofer here.

Western Europe might see a slight increase in defense spending over the next few decades, but (believe it or not) the world is generally becoming more peaceful, so it's not like we're going to see WWI or WWII levels of arming and staffing of personnel. Short duration high intensity conflicts are more commonplace these days, so it may be feasible to see something closer to what Germany and France have done with specialized clusters of defense forces with a rotating active status as opposed to the "always on" method we use in the US. I think we could use a healthy break from our current levels of force projection, and I think we deserve it.

On women in combat, I can't recall the specific term, but there something in the late 90s/early 2000s called the Women's Trial Introduction into Special Operations Ground Combat (WTISOG) that tested the training, organization of deployment of females with special operations capabilities (not special operations forces per se; yes, there is a difference). Its success rate varies depending on who you ask and what data sets you're looking at.

Resistance to women being in combat seems to be mostly ideological. We're still very uncomfortable with female mortality in military affairs, and this a problem that taps into several facets of civilian society that cannot simply be cut off from within the military. Upper-body strength differences between women and men is the one strong concern for women being in combat, and those kits aren't getting any lighter.

One thing I'm getting tired of is people using bioessentialist junk science to refute female ground combat utility. Even if you argue for a baseline detection in cognitive differences between women and men, most of the time (if not always) it's going to be based on data that is not clinically significant. Any scientifically verified cognitive differences between the sexes should be taken with a grain of salt, especially since neuroscience and gender studies are going through a major purge of their original studies. And especially if you're testing adults who have clearly already experienced gender identity formation and reinforcement from their social environment.

edited 8th Apr '15 4:20:51 PM by Aprilla

It seems in general that the only concern is if they meet the standard. Keep in mind this is limited to people I know and can readily talk to about it. The Marines found women could pass the basic infantry training course. Washout numbers were what a lot of folks were expecting. The officer course had the expected results from the low turn out which was itself expected.

Now on the flipside the Marines ran two successful programs called Lioness in Iraq where female Marines were searching the female locals because of taboos. They basically were an addition to the security element. In Afghanistan they become the FET Female Engagement Teams. They went out on patrol to gather COIN intelligence from the women. Despite being armed they were often perceived as less threatening as the male infantry. They could sometimes get more info not just from the women but the children and the adult males. Some of the FET teams did see some combat though not much. From what I could find it was mostly some asshat taking potshots at US troops in general which was fairly common.

edited 8th Apr '15 5:22:38 PM by TuefelHundenIV

As a European, I support everything that makes us more independent militarily. A unified EU army, as Juncker has called for, would be able to accomplish a lot more with the same budget. Actually meeting the NATO criterion of 2% defence spending wouldn't hurt, either.

In general, I hate how the European countries tend to be little more than vassals of the US politically. I dream of a unified Europe, able to set its own course in the world, and negotiate on equal terms with the US, Russia and China. But that's a huge project that would take decades even if we set our minds to it, and the sad truth is there's not even a hint of enthusiasm for such a project among the general populace (hell, even among the intelligentsia there's only a small minority that would support it).

Eh. I can sort of see her points about drama and brotherhood, but everything else seems to boil down to institutional laziness ('it's too much of a hassle, let's not bother.') The argument that "mixed units = sexual harassment = resources to investigation of harassment cases" is absurd on several levels, and really, it could be used to keep women (or men) out of anything.

edited 9th Apr '15 12:34:20 PM by MidnightRambler

The problem with a unified EU military is national limiters, when the EU has deployed together it tends to run into issues due to bullshit like "Germans don't do patrols".

Yeah, that's the problem with EU policymaking in general. Any kind of policy measure gets the teeth knocked out of it because each of the 28 nations negotiates an exception for themselves.

Which is why we need an Empire of Europe. But that's a topic for another thread.

Where have I heard of that one before?