Murphy's Law: July 20, 2001

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Although women are not allowed to serve in combat units (infantry, armor, artillery and recon), they do work in support and headquarters units that operate close to combat units. On modern battlefields, the fighting often gets confused and support and headquarters units. So women soldiers could find themselves shooting it out with the enemy anyway. The problem here is that because the army has integrated basic training, and reduced the standards of discipline and stress to insure that more women pass this training, the level of discipline and combat readiness has been declining in non-combat units. Many commanders fear that they will not be able to rely on many male and female troops in the non-combat outfits. No one will know for sure until there's some combat action to test the troops. But based on historical experience, armed forces that do not train their non-combat troops to deal with combat, do have serious discipline and effectiveness problems with the non-combat soldiers get fired on.