2 women break Army Ranger glass ceiling

Two women will reach a military milestone as they become the first female soldiers to graduate from the most challenging training course – Army Ranger school.

By passing Ranger School, the two women will now merit wearing the Ranger Tab, but they will not necessarily be allowed to qualify for the 75th Ranger Regiment or have the special skill identifier code added to their MOS. The Rangers serve in short-notice combat deployments as “the largest special operations combat element in the U.S. Army”.

The Pentagon has indicated this may change, as it re-evaluates the role of women in the military.

The 62-day Ranger school includes three phases, each in a different part of the country: wooded areas of Fort Benning, the Appalachian mountains of north Georgia, and swamps in Florida.

Eight of the women were still in the running after the first week, known as the Ranger Assessment Phase, or RAP week, which requires, among other things, that students be able to complete 49 push-ups, 59 sit-ups, six chin-ups, and a five mile run in 40 minutes or less.

The exclusion of women from combat roles has been cited as a ceiling on female officers as it can in practice prevent them from reaching the highest military ranks where combat experience is considered an indispensable qualification.

Army officials say there were no concessions made for the female soldiers. After completion, participants head to the Appalachians for the mountain phase. Officials said Navy leaders concluded that since women can serve in all the same jobs on other ships no real exclusion existed.

“It’s game over for a discussion of whether women can successfully serve”, he said. Of the 20 women who began that class, 17 have been eliminated, along with 251 men.

David Perry, a retired major now living in South Carolina, earned his Ranger tab in 1997 and was a Ranger instructor at Fort Benning in 2000. Ranger students parachute in for the final phase.

America has struggled for a number of years with the issue of trying to fully induct women into the armed forces, an effort that featured with varying degrees of seriousness in films such as Private Benjamin and GI Jane.

The military’s toughest jobs remain closed to female soldiers. Thirty-seven men from the class graduated June 15 because they went straight through the training regimen without having to repeat a phase. Advocates, however, argue that women have already proven their value in combat-related deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Marine Corps has opened its Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va., to women as part of a test for more than two years, but none of the 29 women who volunteered completed the 13-week course.

The Defense Department ordered that all military ratings be open to women beginning in 2016, NBC News reported.