The Pentagon will undergo a review of women in ground combat roles, aiming to ensure what it calls military “effectiveness,” amid ongoing anti-DEI efforts within the armed forces.
Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel Anthony Tata wrote in a memo last month that the six-month review will ascertain the “operational effectiveness of ground combat units 10 years after the Department lifted all remaining restrictions on women serving in combat roles,” NPR reported, after obtaining the memo.
The memo requested Army and Marine leaders provide information on the readiness, training, performance, casualties and command climate of ground combat units and personnel.
They are being asked to provide a point of contact to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit that helps the U.S. government handle national security issues, before January 15, according to the report.
The data provided should include “all available metrics describing that individual’s readiness and ability to deploy (including physical, medical, and other measures of ability to deploy,” the memo stated.
The memo also seeks any internal research and studies not publicly available on “the integration of women in combat.”
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson told NPR that the review was meant to “ensure standards are met and the United States maintains the most lethal military.”
Wilson continued: “Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn't care if you're a man or a woman. Under (Defense) Secretary (Pete) Hegseth, the Department of War's [sic] will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda—this is common sense."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran, has long decried “woke” ideology and spoke out against women in ground combat units when he worked as a Fox News host.
“I’m straight up saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said during a November 2024 podcast hosted by former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan.
During a September address to the military’s top leaders at Marine Base Quantico in Virginia, Hegseth announced new directives to ensure every combat position “returns to the highest male standards.”
He noted that “if that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”
“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape, or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” he said. “This job is life and death. Standards must be met.”
Women make up a small fraction of soldiers serving in the Army, according to NPR’s report. About 3,800 women serve in infantry, armor and artillery. Among them, over 150 women completed extensive Ranger training.
Additionally, a small number of women, about 10, have passed Green Beret training. The Marines also have about 700 women in ground combat jobs.
Women were admitted into all ground combat positions in 2015. In all of these roles, women must meet the same standards as men.
Ellen Haring, a senior research fellow at Women in International Security who is a West Point graduate and retired Army colonel with 30 years in uniform, told NPR the Pentagon’s review is a way to exclude women from ground combat.
“It’s exactly what [Hegseth] said all along,” Haring said. “He’s against women in combat and he’s going to get them out. It’s going to be an effort to prove women don’t belong.”
Another West Point graduate, Khris Fuhr, who worked on gender integration for the Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, agreed, saying the study is “a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.”
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