USA to open all combat roles to women, defence secretary says

Women have long chafed under the combat restrictions, and they have increasingly pressured the Pentagon to catch up with the reality on the battlefield. The Air Force and Navy have relatively few jobs that now exclude women, mainly in Special Forces units.

“I viewed the issues that were raised by all the services, by the way, in varying degrees, and obviously by the Marine Corps, that we needed to take those seriously and address them in implementation”.

Other roles previously reserved for men included special task forces including Green Berets, US Rangers, Air Force parajumpers and Navy SEALs.

In a historic development for gender equality, the United States military is to open up combat roles to women starting January 2016. The US military is now an all-volunteer force, but young men are still required to register in case the draft is reactivated.

Secretary Carter has given all branches of the military 30 days to come up with a plan to institute the change, which will make the USA military genderblind. The study had also observed that the injury rates are high for women or mixed units than men only units. He said allowing women to serve in combat roles makes the USA military “a better and stronger force”.

The move signaled a formal recognition that thousands of women served, and many were wounded or killed, in the last 14 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Carter said the move reflected the need to draw talent from the entire population to best serve the needs of modern military. Only the Marine Corp. has remained resistant to the idea of placing women in unsafe combat positions and has sought any exceptions to removing the bans on doing so. This decision recognises the strength of all of our service members and will expand leadership opportunities for the many qualified women of our armed forces, Senator Sherrod Brown said.

The Republican chairmen of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives Armed Services Committees said the decision will have a “consequential” impact, forecasting a potential battle over the policy shift.

Since Panetta’s decision, the military services have opened up job specialties formerly restricted to women that add up to 111,000 jobs now available for female service members, according to the Pentagon.

The change will not require any gender ratios in the military, but will be confined to allowing qualified individuals to serve in any facet of military service, regardless of gender. Many fields have been opening to women in the a year ago, including the Army’s elite Ranger school, its premier light infantry course.

“There must be no quotas or perception thereof”, he said.