First Women to Graduate From Army Ranger School

Two women completed the course and another has one phase to go.

Making military history, two female soldiers will become the first women to ever graduate from the Army’s notoriously tough 61-day Ranger School training program on Friday, Army officials have announced. The two women are graduates of West Point, and were the only of 19 women to pass the 62-day-long Ranger School.

In an official announcement, Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh commended the graduates.

There are already emerging signals on how some of the services plan to proceed.

In the early 1990s, for example, female members of the military police on missions in the Balkans found themselves under fire on a regular basis, Davidson added in a conference call hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

A top officer at Camp Shelby is not surprised to see two women graduating from Ranger School.

The Army and Marine Corps, however, have thousands of infantry, artillery and armor jobs that are now closed to women.

All gender-integration studies by the services will wrap up this fall so the defense secretary can make a final determination on any exceptions requested by the services by January 2016, said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

“Congratulations to all of our new Rangers”.

But women are increasingly being permitted into combat roles in other US Army units. But since combat experience is crucial to career advancement, women often are blocked from leadership roles if they stay in the military. The assessment is part of a wider effort to determine whether and how to open combat arms jobs to women. (What’s more, women tend to be discouraged to lift weights in American culture, given our weird standards for femininity; those expectations and standards might change if everybody were encouraged to lift a bunch.). “We understand that this will take time”, Bockholt said.

The pair, whose names the Army did not release, completed a 62-day combat course that includes a grueling 12-mile march across rugged terrain in Ft. There will be more women in another Ranger class that begins in November. A third female soldier remains in training, but the others have washed out. In the case of the new female graduates, they are not allowed to apply as the rules stand today. Only 50 percent of Ranger students complete the first phase. They are taught to operate on their own or in small units, and in harsh conditions around the world.

The Ranger Regiment does not require all of its soldiers to attend Ranger School, but most eventually do.