Pentagon to review women in ground combat positions : NPR

U.S. Marine Corps recruits from Lima Company, San Diego’s first gender-inclusive training course, receive a safety briefing April 21, 2021 at Camp Pendleton, San Diego County, California.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

The Pentagon is holding a biannual review of women in ground combat positions, to ensure what it calls the military “effectiveness” of having several thousand female soldiers and Marines in infantry, armor and artillery, according to a memo obtained by NPR.

Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel Anthony Tata wrote in a memo last month that the effort was to determine “the operational effectiveness of ground combat units, 10 years after the department lifted all remaining restrictions on women serving in combat roles.”

Tata asked Army and Navy leaders to provide data on the readiness, training, performance, casualties and command climate of units and ground combat personnel. The services must provide points of contact no later than Jan. 15 to the Institute for Defense Analyzes, a nonprofit corporation that assists the government on national security issues. The memo states that the data should include “all available measures describing that individual’s readiness and ability to deploy (including physical, medical, and other measures of ability to deploy.)”

Additionally, the seven-page memo calls for internal research and studies – not publicly available – on “the integration of women into combat.”

“We should not have women in combat roles”

Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote in an email to NPR that the study aims to “ensure that standards are met and that the United States maintains the deadliest military.” Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite, gender neutral uniforms, because the weight of a backpack or a human being does not care if you are male or female. Under Secretary (Defense) (Pete) Hegseth, the War Department. [sic] will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda – this is common sense. »

Hegseth, a veteran of the Army National Guard who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, opposed women in ground combat units while he was a Fox News host and author. “I say frankly we shouldn’t have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. It hasn’t made us more deadly. It’s made fighting more complicated,” he said in a November 2024 podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan. But during his confirmation hearing last year, he softened his stance, saying women can serve in combat roles as long as they meet the same standards as men.

Pete Hegseth addresses senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia. In her remarks, Hegseth told admirals and generals that women must meet the “highest male standards.”

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

In a September speech to admirals and generals at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia, Hegseth announced that women must meet the “highest male standards.”

“Any place where proven physical standards have been changed, especially since 2015 when combat standards were changed to ensure women could qualify, must be restored to their original standards.” But he didn’t say he was banning women from ground combat positions.

“When it comes to any job that requires physical power to accomplish combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” Hegseth said. “If women can make it happen, great. If not, that’s the way it is. If that means no women are qualified for certain combat jobs, so be it. That’s not the intention, but that could be the result.”

Women currently in ground combat units

Among all soldiers serving in the Army’s combat units, women make up only a small fraction: In total, some 3,800 women serve in infantry, armor and artillery. Among them are more than 150 women who have undergone the Rangers’ harsh training. A small number of women – around ten – have successfully completed Green Beret training. The Marines have approximately 700 women in these ground combat positions. And in all of these jobs, women must meet the same standards as their male counterparts.

Ellen Haring, a senior fellow at Women in International Security, a West Point graduate and a retired Army colonel with 30 years in uniform, dismissed the Pentagon study as a way to exclude women from ground combat.

“That’s exactly what [Hegseth] “He’s against women in combat and he’s going to take them out. This will be an effort to prove that women don’t belong.”

Meanwhile, Khris Fuhr, also a West Point graduate who worked on gender integration for the Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, said an Army study conducted between 2018 and 2023 found that women performed well in ground combat units and, in some cases, had higher scores than male soldiers. She called the upcoming Pentagon study “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Defense Secretary Ash Carter then announced at a Pentagon press conference in 2015 that women would be admitted to all ground combat positions, saying it made no sense to exclude half the population from those jobs.

“As long as they qualify and meet the standards,” Carter said, “women will now be able to contribute to our mission in ways they couldn’t before.”

But the decision was controversial, particularly within the Marine Corps. Afterward, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joe Dunford did not attend the press conference and instead issued a statement saying that “my responsibility is to ensure that his decision is properly implemented.”

Marines privately bristled at the announcement. They conducted a training exercise in the Mojave Desert in 2015 that found gender-integrated units were slower, less lethal and more prone to injury than all-male units. Navy officers also said accepting women would result in greater risk, which would mean more combat casualties. Carter said he sees things differently.

While the Marine exercise found that teams including women were less effective overall, Defense Secretary Carter emphasized that the study did not focus on individual success. Advocates for women in combat say the exercise failed to account for high-performing women in those combat roles.