“I have had the opportunity to provide my advice on the issue of full integration of women into the armed forces”.
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Although women have been allowed in the armed forces since 1948, they were excluded from infantry, artillery and other ground combat jobs.
The Obama administration announced in 2013 its willingness to open all combat roles to women, but the Pentagon had received a deadline to decide whether any exceptions would be retained.
Carter said he believed concerns raised by the Marines that allowing women could result in more casualties could be addressed during the implementation of the policy and the military would be best served by integrating all services without exceptions.
“We are a joint force and I have chose to make a decision that applies to the entire force”, Carter said. It also opens the Marine Corps infantry, a battle-hardened force that many service officials had openly advocated keeping closed to female service members. The Army, Navy and Air Force have moved steadily toward allowing women to serve in all posts, and only the most risky jobs remain closed.
As long as they meet qualifications, women will now be allowed “to drive tanks, fire mortars, and lead infantry soldiers into combat”, he said. He noted that while, on average, physical differences exist between sexes, plenty of women can meet the military’s rigorous physical standards for combat roles – just as there are some men who cannot.
While Secretary Carter said he’ll direct all branches to comply starting 30 days from Thursday, U.S. Army Alaska said it could take at least several months before women are assigned to those roles. “As Commander in Chief, I know that this change, like others before it, will again make our military even stronger”, Obama said in a statement. The historic step served as a rebuke to a Marine Corps call this year for a partial exemption, after it argued mixed-gender combat units were not as effective as male groups.
In making that decision he ignored requests by the Marine Corps to exclude women from certain front-line combat jobs.
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The groundbreaking decision was three years in the making, after the Pentagon gave the US military a January 2016 deadline to comply with the order, saying the restrictions were out of place in a world where women have been part of decade long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with almost 300,000 deployed in conflict zones.
