"...and how much does it impact your ability to fire an AK-47 anyway?" Height doesn't affect it at all. But upper body strength does. If you are fighting in urban environment, your typical stance is to hold your weapon in firing position and walks slowly or jog smoothly. That's 4,3kg peace of metal you should be able to hold with extended arms in front of you. Personally I can do 20min with ease, but 40min is quite maximum or I start shaking. If you want to shoot burst with you AK47, you should know that the bastard shakes like a Polaroid picture. Shooting burst comes handy in close combat, as you are not satisfied with hitting your enemy, you actually want to take him down as quickly as possible. If you want to be more accurate while shooting burst, your friends are practice and upper body muscle mass. Women don't just have less muscle, they also develop slower. PS. I'm not against women in the army. I think they should do a fair share of the suffering if shit hits the fan. But I don't think you should put them in just any unit.
I bought an SKS at 17. I gave it to my then 13-year old sister to fire as quick as she could in semi-auto. She had no difficulty.
You are talking about single shots, I was talking about full auto. You show 1:30 second long video, I was talking about 15min to two hour house clearing session. I guess I was confusing. I did not mean to say that women or children would be useless. What I meant was that muscle matters even today. Shooting is just small part of it. I didn't talk about other stuff, because there is no need for everyone to be able to move Czech hedgehogs or pile up sandbags.
No, I'm talking about women in combat roles. You're talking about a highly-gerrymandered, specific vision in which you get to exclude everyone on the basis that all soldiers everywhere may be forced to relive Blackhawk Down at any time. You weren't confusing. You were chauvinist. You argued that somehow, women lack the upper body strength for combat roles, which is ridiculous. More, you were arguing (as is everyone on this page) that somehow, women can't even train to be adequate for combat roles. Which is purest White Man's Burden bullshit considering A) Women are already in combat roles B) "combat roles" are being filled quite adequately by twelve-year-olds all over the world. I'm not sure what universe you live in, but in my universe if a woman wants to pile sandbags, and can prove her ability to pile sandbags, I'ma let the chick pile sandbags and good on her. I'm 6'1 and 195lbs with a fairly athletic build and I've met plenty of chicks that could kick my ass. You haven't? Here's where things get really offensive Our modern military is totally cool with women getting shot at and totally cool with women shooting back but up until last week, wasn't cool with making it official. Which means any woman anywhere could assume all the risks of combat roles, but could not reap the benefits - additional pay, avenues to promotion, etc. My uncle-in-law is vice-commander of a naval base. He'll never be commander for the simple reason that he didn't go to Annapolis, which means he didn't get to command a vessel, which means he'll never get a star, which means he'll never break O-6. And that's cool - there was nothing keeping him out of Annapolis. That was a choice. A vagina or lack thereof is not. So quit triangulating a universe in which women are unsuitable for combat. They aren't. History bears this out. When advancement in the military is determined by suitability for roles, women need to be allowed to do everything they can prove they can do. Period. Full stop. Making up some cockeyed claim about stiff-arming an assault rifle only makes you look like a sexist idiot.
"But I don't think you should put them in just any unit." = "You're talking about a highly-gerrymandered, specific vision in which you get to exclude everyone on the basis that all soldiers everywhere may be forced to relive Blackhawk Down at any time." You seem to know what I was saying better than I do myself. I was thinking about stuff like setting up a roadblock. Or operating as a grenade launcher squad. Or digging tank mines to frosty road. I can't say I would have first hand experience about the grenade launcher, but I do have experience about setting a road block. And those Czech hedgehogs weight a lot and that grenade launcher weights 500 kg (it's called light). As unimaginable as it might sound, I'm not from U.S. and I'm not particularly interested in female officer paychecks in U.S. military. In Finland it doesn't seem to be a problem, pay or position is not linked to danger as we are not fighting any wars. I was more interested discussing females in military in general. Personally this "are females officially allowed to die" is not very interesting. Of-course they are or at least should be. I think it would be interesting to hear how females would fair in all-female unit? Is it possible to have well functioning mixed unit and how is that possible? And to me it seems girls in camo are currently some sort of cannon fodder as they are usually the slowest and weakest. Could we find roles and technology that would allow women to fight without being cannon fodder?
"I didn't bother to read the implications of the article but I want to say things about AK-47s." I can't say this any more simply: you served in a conscript army where male participation is mandatory and female participation is volunteer-based. The United States fields a fully professional army where participation is wholly voluntary and there are no enlistments available of less than 24-month length. All the tasks you speak of in your 6, 9 or 12-month tour of duty? The United States handles the lion's share of them with contractors. Your experience does not align with the subject at hand, which is women in combat roles in the US military. I'm sorry you don't find that interesting, but it's the subject at hand. If you wish to discuss the upper body strength necessary to fire an AK-47 for 40 minutes, by all means do so. But do not expect me to consider it relevant to the discussion we're having here. By my count, Finland has fewer than 300 soldiers deployed in the world anywhere. The United States has more staff than that at the average black site.
"...and how much does it impact your ability to fire an AK-47 anyway?" Well you kind of asked for it. I actually read the whole article and it was quite crappy. But I'll leave you to discuss females in combat roles in U.S. military. It' wasn't that good discussion anyway. Originally all I wanted was to point out that strength plays a role in modern combat, and you managed to call me "chauvinist" and "sexist idiot". You could cool down a little.