From ABC News: Women were formally integrated into ground combat units in 2015, but now, more than a decade later, the Pentagon has recently started a review of the performance of thousands of women serving in ground combat units — a step that comes amid Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s long-expressed skepticism about their inclusion in such units.
Over the next six months, the review will examine the performance and training outcomes of ground combat units, according to an internal Pentagon memo reviewed by ABC News. Dated Dec. 18, the memo says the findings are expected to inform decisions about how those units are staffed and how their training is designed.
The review comes after years of debate over women’s place in the armed forces. About 4,500 women now serve in ground combat positions across the Army and Marine Corps, including in infantry, armor and artillery units — as well as roughly 10 in the Army’s Special Forces.
“Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson.
In the past, services and outside groups who have studied he effectiveness of women in combat roles did not find degradation of unit performance, but a Marine Corps study revealed that women are more likely to suffer from injuries, the report notes.
In September, Hegseth told troops that the issue calmed down to standards, not gender. When a position demands physical strength in combat, there should be rigorous, gender-neutral requirements.
“If women can make it, excellent,” he said at the time. “If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”
Read more at ABC News
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