AMU Homeland Security Opinion

US Marines in the Future to Have More Female Infantry

By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security

Over the last decade, when the number of women that saw combat in their combat support roles in major US military operations increased as a matter of course with asymmetric threats, new thought was put into why females should be restricted from direct combat in all but specialty and not assignment; and that they might as well be trained to fight if they are to be deployed and targeted or give them the options to be soldiers and Marines.

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta removed the direct-combat exclusion rule for women in 2012, stating that: “If members of our military can meet the qualifications for a job — and let me be clear, I’m not talking about reducing the qualifications for the job…then they should have the right to serve.”

Second Lieutenant Sage Santangelo explains why she thinks she and 13 other US Marine Corps officers failed to pass the Marine Corps Infantry Officers Training Course at Quantico since 2012:

“There came a point when I could not persuade my body to perform. It wasn’t a matter of will but of pure physical strength. My mind wanted more, but my muscles quivered in failure after multiple attempts. I began to shiver as I got cold. I was told I could not continue.

That night I forced every step to be normal as I dragged myself — weighed down by gear, disappointment and exhaustion — back to the barracks. It was no consolation that 28 other lieutenants, including the other three women, failed . As I sat in my room, famished and waiting for pizza that seemed like it would never arrive, I reflected: Why did I fail?”

Second Lieutenant Santangelo describes herself as a risk taker who held a pilots license since the age of 21; a rock climber, and an athletic ice hockey goalie defending against 80 mph pucks.

She gives the average drop-out rate for the class, which would be all or mostly males, to be 20-25. All of the other women taking the course before failed on the first day, except one.

The 13 week course is designed to weed-out infantry officers and the first days is the Combat Endurance Test, pushing the officers to their limits. Her one complaint was that men are allowed to retake the course a second time but women are not.

She advocates not lowering the bar but keeping it the same for men and women. In fact, Santangelo believes that if standards for women were the same as men long before they reach this phase, more women might have a better chance at success. She argues that women currently have an instutional disadvantage in the testing for direct-combat roles because they are not pushed in strength and endurance early on in their careers as the males are.

Since most women cannot meet the standards for men in pull-ups, running, and sit-ups, for example, it is a difficult thing to ask. But for the elite female contenders that might have a chance, this could be a fair point. The problem has been too many women cannot match the strength of men period. And unless they are genetically or artificially boosted in the future they remain disadvantaged in physical aptitude not require in their specialty fields.

But letting the females push ahead earlier could be a key step in fairness. This should be a personal goal not a gender thing. Giving women the option to train how males train for combat and hold those standards if they want direct-combat tracks is critical. It does take time to gain strength, especially if there is a disadvantage upon entry.

But women are moving into the Corps and the US military as a whole in spite of their challenges, hurdles and the politics behind them. Santangelo cites 13 females that have already passed Marines enlisted infantry course at Camp Geiger, North Carolina. Camp Geiger is less rigorous than the 13 week officer’s infantry course but is still demanding in screening out who is capable and who is not.

 

 

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