Even if we did… getting and keeping whatever that device would be functional on a battlefield is a whole different ball-game…

War sucks…

Edit: The easiest answer is a standard razor blade. It’s easy, simple, and light (and reuseable if needed… as much as they’re not really supposed to be). But that’s what causes problems.

I’ve never been in the military,

So then you have no clue what the M50 respirator fits like then…

but I can guarantee I’ve had to wear a full face respirator rated for organic solvents more often than you.

Weird guarantee to make when you have no fucking clue who I am or what I do… I even told you from my post that I have a full face respirator still. Would be weird to have one and not be using it no? But now this devolves into a pissing contest, which I’m not particularly interested in participating in.

Edit: Additionally… the risk of whatever you’re doing in the hospital is much lower than Sarin gas or other wartime gaseous weapons. A bad seal for you might make you a little dizzy or you have to take a break and re-seal/replace your respirator, where a bad seal on the battle field would simply mean death.

Don’t thank me… Thank my recruiter.

Yeah… I expected those here as well… thus the “and to preempt an argument” section.

I’m out of the military now… I oftentimes let my beard get longer… I can promise you(anyone) that masks don’t fit nearly as well. I have a personal full face respirator for a number of reasons. It doesn’t seal nearly as well when my beard is anything beyond basic stubble for me. First the beard changes your face shape, second hair doesn’t compress well unless you really crank on the straps and thus by nature the seal becomes uneven since hair moves and clumps, third when you crank on the straps… it fucking hurts after a while. Turns out people in general don’t like having their face compressed.

Now you want to apply those problems to a warzone… Where the first and second will make donning your mask considerably harder when you’re under fire… and the third will make it more likely that people will want to remove the mask or make worse choices because they’re in literal pain wearing the mask.

It’s one thing if you’re only wearing the mask in a fire or something and a nominal amount of carbon monoxide gets through… Mustard gas or other agents could be outright deadly at very low doses.

Edit: Oh another difference… Consumer shit isn’t meant to be worn for days on end… So it tends to be softer/pliable. Which can contour and fit more shapes/beards and such… Military NBC equipment isn’t this way. It’s mean to be worn for considerably longer and perform to a much different standard. They much more rigid, which adds to the problem a bit… less flexible overall because it needs to be a more resistant rubber/plastic. A respirator for a firefighter gets civilian purposes are typically used for a few hours before being replaced… A soldier could be wearing the same mask for weeks or months only replacing the cartridge when expended.

I had a beard while in (Norwegian combat engineer). You can pull the mask as tight as a homophobic preachers sphincter in a pride parade and it will never be completely sealed. After the first time it was voluntary to pull off the mask while testing using CS, I used to take it off as I was exposed already. In a war situation I would be smooth as Flipper in a second

Fucking men thinking they should be the ones fighting wars. They’re worse shots, they can’t wear gas masks, they take up more space in transports…

So you’re under some mythical belief that gas warfare hasn’t been a problem since WW2… That’s wild. So if it’s such a non-issue… Why did you get the training?

Correct, that is the “profile” I was referencing. Any medical condition that requires deviation from the “standard” is written up as a profile and is approve by the medical captain (which is normally your unit’s doctor, medics work under them). In this case, it would be referenced as a “shaving profile”. I’m not a medic, I have no idea what standards/problems get you a permanent profile. I do know that transitional or temporary issues would just net you a few weeks of having the profile until it cleared up.

But you made me realize one thing I missed. I was also speaking from the context of Army. Marines are much more likely to be at the front lines or in events that may need masks. It’s one thing to let a cook or mechanic have a permanent profile. It’s another when it’s a front-line warrior (as all marines are trained to be, much more so than the Army) who’s much more likely to be exposed to airborne chemical attacks. I would presume that this standard would be even more strictly enforced there simply because of the missions they are assigned.

A little more context. I was attached to a pathfinder unit (which dates me a bit since those are all disbanded at this point). We weren’t necessarily “elite” but as close as you get short of going special forces or ranger units. These guys would air drop into areas and do all sorts of cools shit with special equipment (Edit: cutting open downed helicopters was literally a mission assigned to us, so imagine a group of a dozen dudes air dropped into an area hunting down downed aircraft to cut out sensitive gear [can’t leave it behind for the enemy] and rescuing pilots. /Edit). While deployed, they had their masks on them even though there weren’t all that many cases of chemical warfare at that stage of the deployment. It’s just how it goes. You have the equipment you need on you, or you risk dying. If equipment failed you while you were airdropped in, you can easily break limbs and be stranded. Missions can be hard… for certain groups excessively so. War isn’t pleasant.

I can admit that it does affect the black community more than any other. And that sucks. But when the “fix” for this “racism” is people dying while deployed… I can’t feel “bad” about it. Less of my brothers dying to preventable things is ALWAYS good. It sucks… and I’m sure that it’s abused to some extent by some leadership that are actually racist. But there’s very real problems behind the scenes that makes it something that must be considered.

I didn’t say or reference anything about gender. Go troll someone else. I met and married my wife while in service. We’re both veterans.

All soldiers undergo basic training. Basics of infantry because everyone is considered first and foremost infantry. After that you’re trained in your selected job position. For the Army this is AIT (Advanced Individual Training), your AIT is based on the job you took (MOS). I was initially a 13M, I shot rockets out of a tracked vehicle called MLRS. I then reclassed to Unit Supply (92Y) for a myriad of personal reasons.

Your selected MOS puts you in specific training to do that job. A wheel vehicle mechanic knows different things than a track vehicle mechanic. So even positions that seem on paper closely related can have wildly different training. This makes it hard to simply swap people without retraining which is a massive cost.

Unit supply is trained on different regulations than the IT people running even though they’re often side by side at headquarters. Different processes, papers, and regulations for different paper pushing jobs. “paper pushing” jobs are often not trained in advanced warfighting operations like clearing villages vs clearing singular rooms shown in basic training. Or operating heavier weaponry vs just what you get during US weapons training in basic.

But ultimately everyone is (in a perfect world situation) deployable… even the totally not combat related chef (Culinary Specialist 92G) gets deployed to warzones because soldiers need to be fed. Do you want to disadvantage the guy working a non-combat job in a warzone in case the FOB or base gets bombed/gassed?

It’s kind of a fucked position to say that anyone at any time can be deployed… but this specific group will be at a much higher risk of dying because a physical condition can’t be accommodated for reasonably… But you’re going anyway!
The alternative is to say a specific group can’t be deployed because of the a condition and thus they get to fill stateside slots permanently which now affects everyone else quite negatively as they will need to deploy more often.

There is no “win” here, nor reasonable equity to be had without accepting that people will die because of the position. Now, personally, I’m in the position where I want to see less of my people die wherever possible… In this case the only answer that makes sense is to not put them in dangers way from the get-go, but that makes them unemployable… which ultimately means they shouldn’t be in service at all. Which sucks as a position. But I don’t see an alternative answer.

And to make a note… The article is specifically referencing Marines… They’re a much more extreme version of this… Even the logistics/operational MOS is trained to be infantry first and foremost and expected to maintain infantry readiness much more so than other branches of the military. In the Army, most non-combat positions are expected to lose a lot of combat effectiveness over time as they train those skills much less.

Edit: I guess TL;DR, we don’t build units to be non-deployable as that’s counter to the job/point of the military… And we don’t get to pick and choose what the enemy attacks. My FOB was attacked a bunch (mortared at least every other day), and we weren’t near anything that I would consider “front lines”.

Good for you I guess? I fail to see how this adds anything of merit to the conversation.

Edit: They’ve edited their comment…

“No thank you for your service. I hate you”

The fuck is wrong with you? If you have an opinion about war, write your senator. Being disrespectful to a person that served and otherwise did nothing wrong is disgraceful.

They just become cops when they get out.

Extreme high end customer service. Basically our uniform standards are not far off of military standards

Seriously, I work for a large fortune 500 and after lock down one of my coworkers came to the office for the first time with hair down to the middle of his back (pulled back in a ponytail) and a beard halfway down his chest. Management saw him and the first reaction was “that’s an amazing beard!”.

He kept it for about a year then trimmed it down because he said it was annoying to keep up.

I can understand some basic requirements of professionalism, but military level requirements by a civilian employer, screw that.

Never done it on my face, but I have had my back done. I don’t have that much hair back there, but my god that burned like a bitch. I can’t imagine doing it on my face, judging by how much it hurts to pull facial hair vs back hair with tweezers. Barely feel plucking a long one on my shoulders. I’m somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 black. I don’t look it, very light skin and freckled. I can’t grow a beard, just very thick and wiry mustache and chin, patches elsewhere. It’s funny, it’s all different colors from orange to blonde to black. I get razor bumps bad so I try to only shave a couple times each week. If I don’t have work I only shave once a week.

Yeah that’s what i tried to implicate: they don’t even really care about how dumb and unbelievably stupid their coverup reasons sound because they don’t care about hiding their racist beliefs and intentions anymore.

White guys demonstrably exhibit “blindness” to extremism within their own ranks.

Whacked out incel reared on alt right algos to become some WN incel? “Mental illness”

Army of white guys marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us!” “We need to understand why “young men” feel alienated”

Racist boomer dad/uncle/grandpa spewing shit and bringing up a whole new generation of racists? “He’s just from another time!”

Until they’re honest with themselves, they’re going to be the demographic that enables the destruction of the core values of the US.

Something about your comment has me wanting to call “air force one” to “Taco truck”.