USA defense chief Ash Carter said on Thursday the US military would open all combat jobs to women. “We have to take full advantage of every individual who can meet our standards”, Carter said further.
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“They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars, and lead infantry soldiers into combat”, Carter said during the press conference. “They can serve as Army rangers, Green Berets, Navy SEAL, Marine Corps infantry, Air force para jumpers and everything else that was previously open only to men”.
The president compared the move to the desegregation made when the government allowed gay and lesbian Americans to serve openly in military roles. This new ruling will “clear their path to do so”.
“Let us make the decision to include women in combat for the right reasons, that is because they are qualified”, WRAL military analyst and retired Gen. Robert Springer said. The House and Senate Armed Services committees said it will review the Pentagon’s decision to open all combat jobs to women, The Hill reports.
However, according to commentators, it was uncertain how many would actually want to compete for some of the more grueling Army and Marine Corps infantry posts or for spots on the high-risk special operations teams.
“They’ve been serving in positions in support roles and positions that have put them in combat for a number of years now”, Lt. Col. Brown said. However Secretary Carter asserted his choice to apply the policy to all branches, stating that the US military is a “joint force, and I’ve chose to make a decision that applies to the entire force”.
“We will need to be prepared to do so going forward as it bears on the specialities that will be opened by this decision”, Carter said. And while at the end of the day this will make us a better and stronger force, there still will be problems to fix and challenges to overcome.
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Carter directed the services to provide timelines in January, 2016 for how they would implement integration of female service members into all unit combat units by April of next year. The Defense Department rescinded the 1994 rule in 2012 and told all services to submit any special requests and plans they have for integrating women into previously closed positions by September 30, 2015. “Our armed forces will draw on an even wider pool of talent”, Mr. Obama said. The final step is to open the remaining 220,000 positions, including those in artillery and infantry.
