Battleland

Women in Combat Marching Orders Issued

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Damir Sagolj / Reuters

A female U.S. Marine drinks cobra blood during a jungle training exercise in Thailand in February.

One thing the U.S. military can do is draft reports.

The Pentagon has released the services’ plans detailing how women are to be integrated into front-line combat units over the next couple of years.

The reports are from the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and the Special Operations Command.

“I remain confident we will retain the trust and confidence of the American people by opening positions to women, while ensuring that all members entering these newly opened positions can meet the standards required to maintain our warfighting capability,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says in his just-released letter urging the services to forward march toward their goal of putting women on the front lines.

Not everyone agrees. “Department of Defense and military leaders are letting down the troops by moving ahead with ill-advised plans to order (not ‘allow’) women into physically-demanding direct ground combat positions,” says Elaine Donnelly of the independent Center for Military Readiness, a persistent opponent of opening up combat units to her gender. “Missions of these fighting teams, which attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action, are very different from the experiences of courageous military women who have served in harm’s way while exposed to incident-related or contingent combat in war zones since 9/11.”

Sounds like some Marines Battleland knows.