Sci-fi and military training standards?

[Spear80]

I love to read, lately i'm on a Sci-fi kick, and i'm reading anything from warhammer 40k novels, to Honor Harrington. (with the 40k novels being a bad example for my query.)

In most of these Sci-fi universes, civilized humanity, manages to unite and create an all inclusive military.  Males and females, serving alongside in war. (I haven't really encountered any authors, incoorporating anyone who identifies differently and be human) Usually, its been that way for centuries, or at least decades, and not worth commenting on by the character in question. (although the author might) For some characters it might simply be they don't know any different, others, might be aware their barbaric ancestors barred females from the service or at least the front line.

Now, i'm wondering about the standards of training for those futuristic militaries.

In today's military, those that accept women, the female recruits, run slower, do less push-ups, pull-ups, or whatever else is required for them to pass the entry level course. Often they do quite well, and enter their respective military at that first tier. But i've seen articles where these tough women falter when they try to finish a more advanced or Elite course. Courses that didn't alter their standards in any way to allow for a woman.

I won't provide such an article or youtube clip, or the comments that come with it, revolving around kitchens and her not being in it, or how anyone in the Elite should be able to carry a fully grown man on his/her shoulder for whatever distance. The gist being that to alter the standards to allow for women in the Elite would endanger people.

Now going back to the future, will they have changed the standards to allow for women to not only join the military in large numbers, but also join their respective elite units and not endanger themselve and their comrades. (as today's commenters are concerned about) Or will women gradually manage to overcome those unaltered standards, by pushing themselves harder and harder.


The easy answer would be genetic enhancement, but if you improve both men and women by X-percent, the difference will remain the same. Another is Powered armour, but any military worth its name will want to see you can hack it, up to a certain, unenhanced point, before they strap you into a billion dollar suit.


If you read this far, what do you think will happen to those standards. Will the bar be lowered, consequences be damned or do they remain, and will future women just grow into them.

[RedRose]

I'm thinking genetic enhancement, maybe new techniques of training/training from childhood?

[TheGlyphstone]

Being an aficionado of similar stories, I always assume it's just a consequence of the far larger human population available when we've spread across interstellar distances on numerous planets. Even if the percentage of women capable of passing the higher training thresholds doesn't change (via genetic manipulation or something), the absolute number of women capable of doing so will be higher because there's just more women period.

[greenknight]

Come back after Starship Troopers. It's only about 280 pages. Heinlein has some very specific philosophical points on the subject and it's your number one discussion on how to train a sci-fi military force. It also represents a very progressive attitude...for 1959.

[Marduk]

None of the above.

I would suspect - and it's just my opinion - that in any kind of true Sci-Fi future in which humanity is a multi-planet or multi-system species the OVERWHELMING number of combat roles would be filled by robots and the only military positions in which flesh-and-blood humans still partake would be jobs pertaining to the upkeep, programming and maintenance of those robots or highly niche, specialist jobs that - due to either artificial intelligence not possessing the mind to grasp it or automation not possessing the fine motor skills necessary to perform it - robots can't do. In this future I would suspect that your standard military personnel - the bulk of your human forces - would be technicians.

In this spirit the "physical standards" test will become somewhat redundant. There will still be physical standards required for the military but they will be, by virtue of humans no longer - by and large - participating as combatants unless something goes terminally wrong, so much lower that they relative discrepancy between men and women won't be a factor.

That's just how I see it though.

[Spear80]

I'm thinking genetic enhancement, maybe new techniques of training/training from childhood?

i've come across that in a novel or two, even a computer game, but if you seperate and train someone from childhood, then enhance them you're creating a warrior caste of sorts, which has its own failings. I've read "future History" where such supersoldiers revolt, having to be put down by non enhanced soldiers. Making genetic enhancements Iffy to the rest of humanity.

And in at least one movie, once upgraded soldiers came along,  the older model soldier was discarded as so much garbage, literally.

More to the point, if you enhance both men and women, the difference will stay the same.

[Spear80]

Being an aficionado of similar stories, I always assume it's just a consequence of the far larger human population available when we've spread across interstellar distances on numerous planets. Even if the percentage of women capable of passing the higher training thresholds doesn't change (via genetic manipulation or something), the absolute number of women capable of doing so will be higher because there's just more women period.

Hmm, i could see that. But that would mean that the mark 1 Earthborn female, will never cross that thresshold, while the mark 1 Proxima born female, having lived in a higher gravity will manage. While at the same time, mark 1 males from proxima, won't even break a sweat.

[Spear80]

Come back after Starship Troopers. It's only about 280 pages. Heinlein has some very specific philosophical points on the subject and it's your number one discussion on how to train a sci-fi military force. It also represents a very progressive attitude...for 1959.

Oh, believe me i read it, been a while though. Not sure how it fits here, to be honest. The Mobile Infantry, is an all male unit. (unlike in the movies) the women fly and command the ships, and do very well at it. They have their own areas aboard ship, with a male Mobile infantry guard at the entrance. You can't be more seperate than that,...unless that was your point.

A point well made, but one i doubt today's and future women, will readily embrace.

[Spear80]

None of the above.

I would suspect - and it's just my opinion - that in any kind of true Sci-Fi future in which humanity is a multi-planet or multi-system species the OVERWHELMING number of combat roles would be filled by robots and the only military positions in which flesh-and-blood humans still partake would be jobs pertaining to the upkeep, programming and maintenance of those robots or highly niche, specialist jobs that - due to either artificial intelligence not possessing the mind to grasp it or automation not possessing the fine motor skills necessary to perform it - robots can't do. In this future I would suspect that your standard military personnel - the bulk of your human forces - would be technicians.

In this spirit the "physical standards" test will become somewhat redundant. There will still be physical standards required for the military but they will be, by virtue of humans no longer - by and large - participating as combatants unless something goes terminally wrong, so much lower that they relative discrepancy between men and women won't be a factor.

That's just how I see it though.

I can see your point, the thing is, right now the drone hype, is the way it is, because so far, there's only been one military that's really been using them. Once that military runs into a proper resistance, (god forbids, cause that'll be in ww3), those drones and what not will probably be countered effectivly. And while the teenagers controlling those drones will go right ahead gaining experience, drones will not have as much of an impact as they do currently while unopposed. They will probably remain a thing, just as a rifle is a thing, but they're not the be all end all, and there will always be soldiers, male and female, if the authors have their way. To either request the drone strike or to follow it in.

[Inkidu]

God made men and women, power armor made them equal.

In all seriousness. There are any number of solid excuses for this.

Genetic therapies.
Maybe women are psychic.
Power armor.
Clones.
The vast number of people and the general rise in armor and medical tech make it moot.
Maybe ground combat isn't important if you have a ship that can wipe any city off the map.

Women serve in several combat roles that aren't ground poundy. I don't think most people think too much on it, and real-life is tending toward that anyway.

On the subject of drones. Evan Currie's Oddesy One series (a great series of five books and one ancillary novel so far) when China and India began using drones against the US and there was greater proliferation the ability to strike civilian targets with impunity by any nation against any other caused the world to get sick of it and stop using them for anything other than scouting roles. It was apparently very damaging.

They also don't use nukes often (if at all if memory serves).
There's harder science fiction, but it's fairly hard. It uses tachyons and something akin to the mass-effect though a lot more liberal in its application. Though one side does use Alcubierre drives.

[greenknight]

Oh, believe me i read it, been a while though. Not sure how it fits here, to be honest. The Mobile Infantry, is an all male unit. (unlike in the movies) the women fly and command the ships, and do very well at it. They have their own areas aboard ship, with a male Mobile infantry guard at the entrance. You can't be more seperate than that,...unless that was your point.

A point well made, but one i doubt today's and future women, will readily embrace.

Piloting and command aren't the exclusive province of women in the setting. And Heinlein understood the political franchise inherent in military service (I don't think he'd bear any specific animus to Pat Schroeder and her camp for the same reason). But that's not the point.

Starship Troopers is primarily concerned with how and why to train soldiers. It covers not only the curricula but the philosophical and political underpinnings of it.

But what is the question? How to include some "realism" in writing? A practical discussion for future, real world decisions? How to counter "Get back in the kitchen!" comments?

[Mathim]

None of the above.

I would suspect - and it's just my opinion - that in any kind of true Sci-Fi future in which humanity is a multi-planet or multi-system species the OVERWHELMING number of combat roles would be filled by robots and the only military positions in which flesh-and-blood humans still partake would be jobs pertaining to the upkeep, programming and maintenance of those robots or highly niche, specialist jobs that - due to either artificial intelligence not possessing the mind to grasp it or automation not possessing the fine motor skills necessary to perform it - robots can't do. In this future I would suspect that your standard military personnel - the bulk of your human forces - would be technicians.

In this spirit the "physical standards" test will become somewhat redundant. There will still be physical standards required for the military but they will be, by virtue of humans no longer - by and large - participating as combatants unless something goes terminally wrong, so much lower that they relative discrepancy between men and women won't be a factor.

That's just how I see it though.

Well in Star Trek, Data was the only 'robot' in the entire Federation so while the aspect of replacing manned positions with drones and the like, they had a wide array of alien races of varying levels of strength and beyond-human capabilities that largely negated sexual divisions, at least when compared to humans. But then, yeah, there's genetic enhancement (Khan) and there's a heavy reliance on technology rather than human ability, plus you'd usually have groups to help anyone injured. My biggest thing is the medics; with so many different species, knowing their physiologies enough to figure out what to do in the moment to treat a particular injury would be logistically impossible, although their technology also enables them to access encylopedic entries on just about anything at a push of a button or voice-command. But, without that, you'd need to have such enhanced mental capacity that unless humans are artificially enhanced or have undergone some evolutionary event that vastly increased intellect and memory, the over-reliance on technology renders the entire question moot and frankly having both male and female humans in a planetary military would simply be a necessity because of how many losses they'd be suffering and needing to shore up the numbers. If there was an actual conflict, of course.

[Rustic]

I feel it's robots, in one fashion or another. It'll probably be a mix of robotic units, depending on how far AI has advanced, and the nations that have access to said technologies.

Drones aren't the only robots of the future. Robotic tanks, robotic transport vehicles, robotic boats, robotic mounted guns, robotic mobile weapon platforms (whether bipedal or something else), robotic fighter jets (one step up from current drones), heck even robotic missiles. I think the question isn't if robots will replace humans, the question is will humans operate the robots or if they will use a rudimentary or sophisticated AI? There are different types of AIs out there, but they're getting fairly advanced. Sure none have reached "consciousness" as hollywood likes to emphasize, but they can take over well before that. I mean soon they'll be driving cars, so why not driving tanks?

Of course nations that aren't as rich, probably won't be employing robots right away, or at all, but chances are they won't have the money for genetic enhancements either.

If they go for the genetic enhancement route, then I'd say they wouldn't make more powerful women, they'd just choose the best qualities of both sexes and make a androgynous soldier. Why give them genitals if they don't need to procreate? Of course, if they can't make an androgynous soldier for some reason, yeah I suppose men and women would be both enhanced.

[HannibalBarca]

Just how fictitious you want the setting to be bears a lot on the story itself.  How far into the future is the sci-fi plot?  Is it based around humanity or aliens or a combination of the two?  Do robots play a major role in the society, as well as in the military?  Is there conscription of civilians for military service?

If you're trying to make a hard science fiction plot, reality has to intrude.  There is a peak to human athleticism, based on the body's physiology.  Regardless of how much one trains or works out, there will be a limit to what any individual soldier's body can reach as far as strength, endurance, and agility.  There is some overlap to male and female bodies as far as these three qualifications, but it is pretty clear that the human male body has a higher ceiling for strength, at the least.  But we aren't going to be talking about the average human male, or female, in the military, especially in a futuristic setting.  We're going to be talking about highly trained and motivated military personnel.  So the question will be--just how many female soldiers will be able to reach the qualifying levels of physical strength, stamina, and agility that the future military lays down as necessary for the missions they need to undertake?  That depends very much on what the author requires for the plot.

After all, there are some very physically fit people in this world.  I have a lot of personal experience with gymnasts, and they tend to be--to me--the standard for the peak of human athleticism.  Take Aly Raisman, for example, gold medal gymnast from the USA:



Even for a gymnast, Aly is particularly developed as far as musculature.  But would that be enough to qualify for any particular special forces, even today, as far as endurance, strength, and agility?  After all, I'm pretty sure most Navy SEALS aren't 6'5" and 250lbs like Dolph Lundgren--nor do they need to be to fulfill their duties:



Still, there are female gymnasts who are even more developed than Aly Raisman:



These images can also be misleading, as well.  Aly Raisman happens to be 5'2", and size of frame can also contribute to overall strength and ability to carry out certain physical tasks.  Again...I can guarantee that not all Navy SEALS are six feet tall or more, but I'm assuming that the average soldier (male or female), let alone SEAL, is taller than 5'2".

These are candidates in SEAL training, and they look built and healthy, but not particularly large:



Not like this guy, another gymnast:



Now maybe Aly Raisman wouldn't be large enough to carry out certain physical tasks demanded of her as a special forces soldier, but I'm sure there are taller women than her with the same level of physical development.  I'm not even going to bring up attitude, fortitude, or mental toughness, because gymnasts have to have a shit-ton of that to get where they are.  But are soldiers in general, and special forces troops in particular, at a gymnast's level of peak physical development?  No, of course not.  Their skill set doesn't require it.  So, I'm sure there could be female special forces troops, not only in the present, but in the future.  I wouldn't expect there to be very many, though, as I'd think the development required to bring a female body to that level of physical strength, endurance, and agility would be much higher than that required to reach the same level with a male body.

[greenknight]

You're using a totally wrong analog with gymnasts. Ignoring the long-term consequences for elite level gymnastics training, it's just not comparable. Gymnastics, while it does offer superb training that would assist in negotiating an obstacle course, it doesn't do much else. A much better comparison would be pentahletes (of course) and heptathletes. Mastering the variety of skills and the endurance and development required by each are more significant.

[RubySlippers]

Well in Aliens they had female marines and most seemed bad ass, but some were techs in piloting or medical with one in the infantry with a big gun so I would think if one assumes some kind of enhancement in say steroid like drugs and picking women already fit and athletic combat would be fine.

Add in power armor and well then does gender matter anymore?

Starship Troopers the books had people serving for a term if wasn't just combat they could assign you to any number of jobs, for example you could be a cook or a human medical test subject or work in a mine somewhere for your two years. Even disabled people could join and by law they had to find them something to do I might have worked as a clerk or something. Women could and often were dominant in the Fleet in the books and men in the Mobile Infantry but it was as much culture as anything else if the author thought about it gender wouldn't matter there but you had to be fit and do a lot out of the armor first where they would break anyone who couldn't cut it on a voluntary discharge or on a medical discharge and they still could do other duties one older man was forced out of basic but was a cook on a fleet ship to do his term.