"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.