The combat-focused training teaches the special operations force how to conduct airborne and air assault operations, seize airfields, destroy strategic facilities, and capture or kill the nation’s enemies.
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The announcement by the Navy comes as two women are about to become the first female soldiers to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School on Friday. “But the question becomes ‘Is the juice worth the squeeze?’ The Army has spent thousands and thousands of dollars to send students to a school that has a graduation rate of 48 percent”.
Two-thirds of that class – 251 men and 17 women – either left or were dropped from the course.
Within the Ranger School itself, the women were widely praised by instructors for their physical and mental fortitude. The assessment is part of a wider effort to determine whether and how to open combat arms jobs to women. That could change. Carter is due to decide in coming months whether to approve any recommended exceptions to a policy of opening all military positions to women. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the internal debate.
“Anyone who is willing to serve in uniform and can pass all of the requirements of the program absolutely can serve our country”, he said.
The Army has not yet released their names, in part to protect them from harassment by die-hards who cannot stomach the idea of women wearing the coveted Ranger tab.
“The feedback I’ve gotten with these women is how incredibly prepared they are”, Retiring Army Chief of Staff Gen Raymond T Odierno told the Washington Post.
“Why shouldn’t anybody who can meet these [standards] be accepted?”
The training course was open to women, but the special forces unit was not.
Capt. Kristen Griest, of Orange, and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver, of Copperas Cove, Texas, will graduate Friday from the Ranger headquarters in Fort Benning, Ga.
Two women received a passing grade in the mountains during platoon level combat patrols and moved on to the Swamp Phase on August. 1.
“You got to ask yourself why you are saying, ‘I don’t think females should be in Ranger School, ‘” he told The Ledger-Enquirer newspaper. “Today, though, I will deviate slightly to give praise to the soldiers, non-commissioned officers, officers and most importantly the Ranger instructors who make me proud to serve with them”.
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Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, an author who has written extensively on women in combat, said that women have already proven themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is an entirely different set of qualifications to gain entry into the 75th Ranger Regiment, the active unit dispatched on the most sensitive and specialized missions.
