Odierno backs expanding role of women in combat - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Odierno backs expanding role of women in combat

During an interview on This Week in Defense News aired Oct. 16, Army Gen. Ray Odierno spoke of the future role of women in combat. Discussion of the topic in the below video segment begins at the 2-minute mark.

Few details are known about a forthcoming Pentagon report that looks at whether women should be allowed to serve in combat roles, but this much is certain: The Army’s top officer is not happy.

“I was not involved with this specific report. It was done before I got here,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said recently. “And the reason I want to clarify that is because I am not real happy with it. I don’t think it represents some of the things that our women are doing in combat.”

The report focuses on jobs that put women into maneuver battalions, such as intelligence officers, signal officers and other specialties that women are not allowed to do in combat battalions, said Odierno, who wants to open more doors to female soldiers.

“We need them there. We need their talent,” he said. “This is about managing talent. We have incredibly talented females who should be in those positions. We have work to do within the [Defense Department] to get them to recognize and change. We did not get there at this time in this report, and I’m focused on this and I will spend some time on it.”

Congress in the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act required the defense and service secretaries to review policies “to determine whether changes are needed to ensure that female members have an equitable opportunity to compete and excel in the Armed Forces.” That report was due to Congress on April 15, but the Pentagon was granted an extension through October.

Change seems inevitable. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said during an April 7 visit to the U.S. Division Center Camp Liberty in Baghdad that he was “confident” such change is coming, but said he had “no idea” when it would happen.

Before retiring as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen spoke of a day in which a woman would hold his job.

The question at hand is whether to modify, if not eliminate, combat-exclusion policies that prohibit women from serving in certain tactical and operational career fields.

Some leaders, such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, want to change assignment policies so that women can serve in forward support companies, maintenance companies and as medics.

Others, such as the Military Leadership Diversity Council and the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Service, want to end all combat exclusion rules. Both agencies submitted reports in the past year calling the rules “unnecessary barriers” that are detrimental to the careers of women serving in uniform, and keep capable and qualified women from contributing to the strength of these units.

Lost opportunities

The Army opened most jobs to women more than a decade ago, but combat-exclusion policies still prohibit women from serving in 9 percent of the Army’s tactical and operational career fields, such as armor and infantry. Women also lose key assignments because they can’t be assigned to units or jobs most likely to see direct offensive ground combat. As a result, only 70 percent of Army positions are open to women, according to a report by the Military Leadership Diversity Commission.

These lost opportunities have a lasting effect. Today, 80 percent of general officers come from career fields that are closed to women. Just one female soldier was selected for brigadier general in 2010, out of 100 military officers chosen in all the services. Only 24 of the Army’s 403 general officers — or 6 percent — are female, though women represent roughly 15 percent of the force.

Women have proved their mettle in the wars. Of the 4,468 combatants killed in Iraq as of Oct. 3, 110 were female, as were 635 of the 32,200 wounded. In Afghanistan, 31 of the 1,785 U.S. deaths have been women, as have 214 of the 14,342 wounded.

Yet the question for many is whether women can handle the mental and physical rigors of continuous direct combat.

The diversity council and DACOWITS are confident some women, though not all, can hang in the toughest of occupational specialties. And that attitude is shared by the three key war fighters in charge of training combat soldiers and shaping future combat operations.

Maj. Gen. Bob Brown, commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence; Col. (P) Thomas James, Armor School commandant; and Col. (P) Walter Piatt, Infantry School commandant, each told Army Times that combat arms specialties should be opened to women as long as candidates can meet mental and physical requirements.

Soldiers such as Sgt. Christine Baldwin are proof that they can.

Baldwin recently returned from an eight-month tour with Operational Detachment-A teams 1324 and 1315 in Tahlequah, in northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province. She served as part of a cultural support team that builds relationships with and serves the female population that will not respond to men.

Any time you are placed at the tip of the spear, you’d better be sharp. It was a lesson that Baldwin, a computer graphics artist, learned the hard way.

Her inclusion on the team started with a five-day assessment, which Baldwin called “the most intense five days of my life.” They were pushed to their physical limits. They wore rucks for 10 straight hours while conducting land navigation. Psychological evaluations were thrown in. They were deprived of sleep while their capability, capacity and endurance were tested.

“If someone had told me everything I had to do beforehand, I would’ve been like ‘There’s no way,’ ” Baldwin said. “Afterward, was like, ‘Yeah I can do that stuff, and I am just as tough as those guys.’ ”

Baldwin had nothing but compliments for her teammates, who she said fully accepted her as a member of the unit.

“I had my apprehensions about going in there,” she said. “But once we got in, we told them where we were coming from and they told us where they were coming from. We went out on a few patrols right away and showed them that we were physically able to do this and there were no issues.”