“Each Ranger School graduate has shown the physical and mental toughness to successfully lead organisations at any level”.
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“I see no reason (not) to say: ‘Here are our standards”.
The two female and 94 male graduates started in a class of 400 soldiers.
According to an Army document, 22 students have died over the years during the 18-day swamp course, which puts a large focus on combat scenarios, both air and waterborne.
Thom “Jake” Jacobs coaches girls’ track now at Amity but coached boys when Griest was in high school. “I also remember her being physically stronger than the typical adolescent girl”. “No one has that sort of athletic range!!” he said. “It was common knowledge to people that knew her that that is what she wanted to do”.
The US military has yet to lift a ban on women serving in the fighting force.
It teaches Ranger students techniques to deal with fatigue, hunger, and stress. Lieutenant Haver, a Texas resident, is an Apache helicopter pilot. After a “very objective analysis” of training standards, Greenert said, the special warfare community found they were appropriate for men or women.
The services were expected to report this fall to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter on whether they will seek exceptions to opening up all specialties. The official was not authorized to disclose the name publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Qualified candidates should be allowed to perform the same tasks as their colleagues, regardless of gender”, Klarides said.
They called for sweeping reviews of the physical requirements for combat jobs and gave the military services until January 2016 to argue if any positions should remain closed to women. This was the first year the Army opened the course to women on a trial basis.
Ranger School is the Army’s premier combat leadership course, says the Pentagon. Twenty-nine women entered the course and all dropped out. The program sits among the most hard training courses in the world.
Barno said women have proved they can serve in the Rangers, as well as in other combat specialties that use similar skill sets.
On a farewell visit to San Diego Monday, Greenert said he had been briefed on the preliminary findings of the Coronado Naval Special Warfare Command’s study on whether women should be accepted into the SEALs.
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“It is about can they meet the standard or not, and if they can, we lean toward the fact it would probably be good if we allowed them to serve”, Gen. Ray Odierno, Army chief of staff, said before he retired last week. In Iraq and Afghanistan, unconventional wars where the enemy wore no uniform and was largely invisible until the shooting began, female soldiers saw plenty of combat.
