Military to Mull Opening all Combat Jobs to Women or Get Waivers

That took the form of a year-long experiment called the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force, in which 400 Marines-100 of them female-trained for combat together and then undertook a simulated deployment, with every facet of their experience measured and scrutinized.

The study comes as all branches of the military face a January deadline from the Pentagon to open all combat jobs to women.

The study was carried out as the service departments prepare to submit recommendations to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter on whether any jobs should be kept closed to women.

A yearlong Marine Corps study trying to understand how gender integration would affect combat readiness has found that all-male units were faster, more lethal and able to evacuate casualties in less time.

“If you were to turn down a request for a waiver like that I guess the political machine in the White House would be saying we don’t care about the effectiveness of the ground combat units”, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a member of the Armed Services Committee, told USA Today.

Such conclusions may be disheartening to proponents of gender integration in combat, and certainly put a damper on the news that the Army’s ranger school recently graduated its first female soldiers.

The Marine Corps’ research will serve as fodder for those who are against fully integrating women. In two tasks, the mixed-gender teams performed better.

The study didn’t only compare men to women individually, but also compared how units made up only of men compared to units integrated with men and women.

Furthermore, male Marines who had no infantry training were more accurate in their use of firearms than female troops who had received such training.

The Marine Corps Association & Foundation is the preeminent association and foundation for all Marines and friends of the Corps dedicated to the development and recognition of professional excellence and expanding the awareness of the rich traditions, history, and esprit of the United States Marine Corps. The service was told to assess how individual women do in combat situations, but the task force instead assessed groups with average female Marines – rather than high performers – in them.

“Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interest of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment”, the report stated. It is morally wrong.