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Sure you could. You have to have a baseline, but 80% of it is mental. Most things we do, the average male could do if they trained.

It seems to me that if we're going to have a military, the first thing that military needs to do is to be able to fight a war. It would be nice also if women, gays, transsexuals, ethnic minorities, minority religions etc are proportionally represented amongst all ranks and trades, but surely the first thing we need is soldiers who can fight, sailors who can work a ship and airmen (airpeople?) who can operate aircraft. And we need planes that fly and ships that sail properly, and aren't always being laid up with "propellor problems". We have these two super-duper carriers, and they never seem to be out of dock. OK the Prince of Wales has just set out for the NATO exercises, but a whole day late. What would happen if there was a war? "Oh dont attack us today, Mr Enemy, we're still mending the propellor on our big new boat! Come back tomorrow when we're ready!" A little more investment in the military is needed all round, and bit more emphasis on ships that work and enough sailors to man them. That's right - the Royal Navy is scrapping perfectly good warships because we can't recruit enough sailors to sail them. And a bit less emphasis on wokey-poky diversity officers who think the woker the navy is, the more likely it is to win wars! Disclaimer: I have never been in the military and haven't really a clue - so don't take me too seriously.

Someone got into my libertarian foreign policy books I see? 😜

At this point, I’m not 100% sure I want our armed forces to be particularly competent. I think overall, the Pax Americana has been a good thing—worth fighting a few small-ish wars to preserve, even. If we maintain it on such terms as befit our highest ideals, it can bring about the best possible conditions for worldwide human flourishing—both material and spiritual. But in this day and age, conservatives are wishy-washy about whether they want to preserve it at all; and libs have largely thrown out the value system that made our nation a unique influence for good; they mostly seem to want to preserve American might insofar as they can use it to export the continually-evolving values of the sexual revolution (with a side of fantasizing about using the military to kill right-wingers who won’t toe the line). In such situations, it’s hard not to conclude that a large standing army is of limited use and may actually be a threat. It’s all a darned shame.

I’ve never served in the armed forces, but I’ve worked at jobs where your coworkers would rather be anywhere else. I’m not saying everyone has to be 100% every day, that’s not reality. But it’s a real morale killer to be with people day in and day out who are only going through the motions or worse, clearly don’t want to be there. I can’t imagine what it’s like if your very life depends on someone like the coworkers I’m describing I guess I should have clarified my thoughts more. It's nice that our government doesn't take our dumbest people, those least-able to advocate for themselves, and train them to act as cannon fodder and run into enemy machine gun fire. There are countless examples throughout human history where nations do exactly that. (Since long before machine guns existed.) Wasn't thinking about morale, was thinking about crimes against humanity.

It's a bad feeling.

True. Agree there.

So there weren't specific requirements because there didn't really have to be. It was self-sifting. Fall out on a ruck march? Infantry isn't for you. Can't score 270 on the APFT? Better get working. The training itself weeded them out. Many people didn't go Infantry because they knew this. As the failure and injury rates have increased, the Army has tried to set standards (requirements). OPAT was used before BCT. ACFT was used after. ACFT is sprint/drag/carry, push-ups, plank, overhead ball toss, dead lift, and run. It's the same test everyone else takes, you just have to score much higher.

This is an issue the Army has been struggling with. As the Army has moved to complete integration there have been issues we didn't seem to have in large numbers. Let's use physical ability and the Infantry as an example, and because Infantry is the best anyway. 😁 Not everyone meets the physical qualifications for Infantry. Historically, Basic Training and Advanced Infantry School weeded many of them out. They've tried several methods of determining fair measurements of qualifications, but if one group meets the requirements far less, it gets junked. OPAT and ACFT are examples.

Best song on the album is track 1 side 2.

Most of the Soldiers I work with have a minimum 4 year degree and many of us have graduate degrees.

Hmmm. Sometimes, just because you CAN DO A THING, does not mean you SHOULD DO A THING.

"The mission of the United States military is to kill people and break things. Anything else is a distraction." - Rush Limbaugh (Holy crap do I miss that guy more every day.)

I think it would just be nice if we had qualified Soldiers that wanted to serve. There are many reasons why we don't, but I'm not sure if I have the heart or time to list everything I find wrong with the current military after a lifetime of service.

No, it wouldn't. And hereby you expose what is so wrong with "woke" - they think this is a measure of whether an organization is discriminating or fair. The only reasonable goal here would be: "It would be nice also if women, gays, transsexuals, ethnic minorities, minority religions etc have equal opportunity to achieve / enter all ranks and trades if they want..." But the insane people behind today's nonsense seem to think that there's a proportionate number of all those "groups" that want every possible job there is, as if the percentage of women who want to be plumbers is exactly the same as the percentage of men who want to be plumbers which is exactly the same as the number of [name your absurd group] who want to be plumbers, etc. The whole idea is absolutely absurd if you think about it for even a split second. But no, until plumbers proportionately represent our absurdly defined groups, the universe is unjust*. Hereby, they reject the individual's right to choose what the individual wants to pursue in order to force (and that would be the only way) their proportionate percentages of each group into every job out there. What's that, gay man, you don't want to be a plumber? Tough luck, we're short by one gay male plumber, and you're it! Here's a monkey wrench, now pull those pants down a little and let that crack show! (*Meanwhile, the universe thinks we can all go jump off a cliff for all it cares.)

Why would that be nice?

Do we really know what "thinking" actually is? Or do we only think we know? 😆 There was a movie years ago about a computer that could "think". I forget what it was called, but Julie Christie was in it. (Nowhere in the movie was the term "think" actually defined, so that tas a bit unsatisfying. How can you know whether a machine can think unless you can define precisely what thinking actually is? In the novel of "2001 a Space Odyssey", Clarke used Turing's definition - but this never convinced me even when I first read the book at 14.) Anyway the computer somehow imprisons Julie Christie in her home and finds a way to impregnate her with its "child" - so it can make the transition to become a living being. Perhaps the true concept of "thinking" implies the capacity of self determination, of an entity choosing its own goals for its own purposes, beyond what was intended by its programmers. Of course computers do unexpected things all the time (like making money from post office branches disappear) but that is usually the result of programmer error, not any independent agenda of the computer itself. Could "agency" (for want of a better word) ever arise in a system built upon logic gates? Or does there need to be something else? I've just looked it up - the movie was called "Demon Seed".

So these people have really big feet?

So people would end up with nicely vacuumed feet? Is that a modern version of washing the dust off their feet?

That's a vacuum cleaner? It looks pretty awkward to use, no wonder it was so henryish!

Lets all do the wokey pokey! Because that's what its all about.

@askandanswer & @zil2 this showed up on my memories today.

Lego's are delicious.