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Atlantic
6 days ago
- Politics
- Atlantic
Is This the Hardest Physical Contest in the World?
The United States Army, in business now for more than 250 years, comprises more than 450,000 soldiers. Of those, about a third are in combat arms, serving in armor, artillery, engineering, cyber, and aviation units. Some 56,000 are in the infantry, the 'Queen of Battle,' serving in units such as the 82nd Airborne Division and the 4th Infantry Division. These are the soldiers who go to battle on foot (or, in the case of Airborne units, by parachute—at least on occasion). Among them are some of the most physically fit humans on the planet—the soldiering equivalent of Olympic decathletes. These are the sort who choose to attend Ranger School, the grueling 61-day Army course at Fort Benning, in Georgia, that is meant to push the body, and the spirit, substantially past the breaking point. Only about half of those who start Ranger School eventually finish, some after trying repeatedly. The most elite of those who graduate, the 1 percent of the 1 percent, show up each April to compete in what's known colloquially as the Ranger Olympics. This event is not well known. It is not televised. Not one participant is sponsored by Nike. But the Best Ranger Competition may be the hardest physical competition in the world. Fifty-two teams of two soldiers each start the Ranger Olympics. Over the course of three days, the field is narrowed as soldiers march and run dozens of miles, crawl through obstacle courses, and navigate swamps at night. They carry 50 pounds in their rucksacks, climb 60-foot ropes, and sleep, at most, for four hours at a time. All told, the average competitor burns more than 30,000 calories. These soldiers are, pound for pound, the fittest, most trained, and most disciplined the world has ever known. They are also, nevertheless, part of what President Donald Trump has called our 'woke military that can't fight or win.' Trump has vowed to remake the armed forces, eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and excoriating generals (many of whom served in combat) as losers. His secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has moved to push trans service members out of the military ('No more dudes in dresses,' he said in a speech this spring) and has suggested that women should not serve in combat. For three days in Georgia this spring, those culture wars felt very far away, in part because what I saw at Best Ranger belies the idea that the Army is weak or 'woke'; in part because among the 104 soldiers on the starting line at Fort Benning was a 25-year-old first lieutenant named Gabrielle White, a West Point graduate who was the first woman to compete for the Best Ranger title; and in part because, to her opponents on the course, the fact that she was a woman did not seem to matter. The only thing that mattered to the Rangers I met was that she had qualified for the competition. I've covered the military for more than 20 years and have seen soldiers in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through my travels, I've come to realize that the political class and civilians in general have little idea who soldiers are or why they serve. In the past, military service was almost an unwritten requirement of the Oval Office, but the only president to have served in the past three decades was George W. Bush (who did not see combat). And although the U.S. has one of the largest active militaries in the world, less than 1 percent of its population serves in the armed forces, which means that most civilians have little contact with the military. During the 20 years of war that began in 2001, the military faced numerous crises of public perception. In fairness, the mission the armed forces were given during the War on Terror was near impossible, with an ever-evolving definition of victory in both Afghanistan and Iraq and competing agendas from administrations of both parties, not to mention a public more comfortable with thanking soldiers for their service than sharing the burden. These days, debates over trans and women soldiers and other 'wokeness' wars dominate the discourse around the military, all of which hides the fact that, in my experience, most people volunteer to serve because they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Once among the ranks, most consider a soldier's politics or gender identity less important than their ability to do the job. The military must now reinvent itself for a modern battlefield where it could face combat against Russia, China, or North Korea—or perhaps more than one at once. In this context, understanding the current force is crucially important. The Best Ranger Competition offers a glimpse of some of the most elite soldiers at work. A month before the competition, I met the three qualifying teams from the 75th Ranger Regiment, a special-operations unit whose members had won the competition four years in a row. They were training on an indoor turf field with squat racks along one side and cardio machines along the other. When I arrived, the soldiers were finishing a workout—doing planks with a 45-pound plate on their back and carrying 120 pounds 10 yards after a circuit of squats and bench presses. Speakers blared AC/DC and Johnny Cash. Nick O'Brien, who trains the regiment's 3,000 Rangers, looked on with his team of nine coaches, trainers, and dietitians. For months, these six men had paused their day jobs with the regiment to prepare under O'Brien, practicing tasks such as assembling just about every handheld weapon in the American arsenal, marching and running for miles, and navigating the woods at night with just a compass and a map, eating only MREs ('meals ready to eat'), rations supplied by the Army that, over time, do demoralizing things to the standard human digestive tract. First Lieutenants Kevin Moore and Griffin Hokanson, who composed Team 44, were favored to win this year. It was the first time that either man had represented the 75th and the first time they had been paired, but they had competed for other units in the past. Both look, a bit disconcertingly, like action figures. Hokanson, who's originally from Oregon, is a faster runner and more agile on the obstacles; Moore, from New York, is stronger. Both graduated from West Point in 2021. First Lieutenant Gabrielle White was also in their class, and the three started Ranger School together the following year. Moore had noticed that the leaders he respected all had Ranger scrolls on their sleeves. Hokanson had a battalion commander who was a Ranger, and saw that Ranger School was where lieutenants who wanted more of a challenge than what they found in the conventional army went. Neither Moore nor Hokanson has faced combat, but they understand, as all Rangers do, that the battlefield in the age of drone warfare can easily become what a former senior Ukrainian commander called a ' zone of continuous death.' Networks of tunnels mean threats can come from any direction—above or below. The infantry must prepare for action at night, or underground, to avoid detection. Still, no other part of warfare is as unchanging as the soldier on the ground, holding the line, defending it, or taking it. The Ranger motto—said to have originated on D-Day, as German mortars and artillery fell down on Omaha Beach—is 'Rangers lead the way.' Ranger battalions were deactivated at the end of World War II but called back into action again in Korea, where they executed raids, set ambushes, and led the counterattack during the winter of 1950 to regain land lost to the Communist offensive. The first Ranger School class was conducted around this time at Fort Benning, focused on individual combat skills and decision making under pressure, reflecting lessons learned in both World War II and the Korean War. Later, as the armed services were becoming an all-volunteer force in the final years of the Vietnam War, generals saw the need for a specialized infantry unit capable of rapid deployment to troublespots around the world. The 1st Ranger Battalion was activated as a permanent unit in 1974. The idea was to build a unit that would act as a benchmark of excellence for the volunteer force. 'The battalion is to be an elite, light, and the most proficient infantry battalion in the world. A battalion that can do things with its hands and weapons better than anyone,' General Creighton W. Abrams Jr. wrote in what would become the unit's charter. 'Wherever the battalion goes, it must be apparent that it is the best.' In recent decades, Rangers deployed during conflicts including 1991's Gulf War and the War on Terror. Rangers were among the special-operations forces who took part in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia in 1993, in which two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and 18 American soldiers, including members of the 75th, were killed. In 2019, Rangers and Delta Force operators killed the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. 'I often think how many soldiers are alive today because they were led by a Ranger,' retired Command Sergeant Major Rick Merritt, who served 25 years in the 75th Ranger Regiment, including combat deployments to Panama, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, told me. Ranger School, Merritt said, is 'the ultimate life-insurance policy for going to combat.' This year's competition started before dawn at Camp Rogers, a training area at Fort Benning, in the pine forest of western Georgia. A crowd of spectators had gathered, a mix of family members, unit mates, and former Rangers. Midway through the first seven-mile run, the competitors picked up a 60-pound sandbag that they would carry for the rest of the race. The 75th Ranger Regiment teams were among the first to return to Camp Rogers, barely pausing after dropping the sandbags before heading to Victory Pond. There, they dove into the frigid water and made their way toward the boat ramp on the opposite shore, about 400 meters away. Some dog-paddled, held up by their life jacket. Others paddled on their back, hoping to conserve energy. One by one, the Rangers shuffled out of the water, soaked and shivering in the cool morning air. 'This sucks,' one of the paratroopers of Team 34 said as they scrambled up the concrete boat ramp and a subsequent hill. Without stopping, his partner answered with the universal infantry rejoinder, 'Embrace the suck.' That meant a day of marching with 50-pound rucksacks as the teams navigated from task to task, earning points for each. In the past, the competition had been linear: Each team followed the same sequence of events. This year's wrinkle—called 'Ranger Reckoning'—left it to the soldiers to complete the remaining objectives in any order. Each task presented a different problem. One was an urban-assault course where teams attacked a two-story building; after throwing a grenade into a makeshift bunker, they would rush forward to a yellow line and perform 20 burpees (an exercise in which a single rep includes a push-up followed by a squat jump). The exercise raised their heart rate, mimicking the stress of combat. Once the burpees were done, the team shot red balloons attached to two targets before moving inside a cinder-block house, where they then faced other targets meant to represent both enemy fighters (to shoot) and civilians (to avoid shooting). In past years, completing events faster meant more time to rest between events. But this new format turned the first day into an endurance competition, O'Brien told me. In all, the teams marched about 35 miles to complete the course. Every task was graded by instructors from the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade, which runs Ranger School. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Blain Reeves, a two-time competitor who won the Best Ranger competition in 1993 and served with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, told me that the first day was a 'smoker.' (Ranger School is meant to 'smoke'—exhaust—its students each day.) Team 38—White and her partner, Captain Seth Deltenre—had a 20-person cheering section that followed them from station to station. White did not agree to an interview; it seemed that she wanted her achievement to speak for itself. Among her supporters was Kris Fuhr, a 1985 West Point graduate who recalled coming of age in a very different military. West Point 'made it very clear that they did not want us there,' she told me. 'We didn't have the protections of equal opportunity' or resources around sexual harassment and assault. 'We had no advocates.' Fuhr has tried to take on that role for younger women in the military, and has run a mentorship program for women attending Ranger School since they were first allowed to do so, in 2015. Later that same year, then–Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that all military positions would be open to women. (Although women had served near the front lines for years, this decision removed the remaining formal barriers to direct-combat roles.) The Army reports that 367 women have attempted Ranger School since 2015; 160 have earned the Ranger tab. In recent years, upwards of 1,000 men have earned a Ranger tab each year. In my months of contact with the Army's event organizers leading up to the Best Ranger Competition, no one mentioned Team 38 or Gabrielle White. In different times, the Army might have celebrated White's history-making presence. But under Trump and Hegseth, mentions of historic achievements by women and minorities have been removed from military websites. As of this writing, trans service members have been banned from the military, and the Pentagon has taken the name of the slain gay leader Harvey Milk, a Navy veteran, off of a supply ship. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, Hegseth wrote that 'women cannot physically meet the same standards as men,' arguing that they will mother soldiers in their units. 'Dads push us to take risks,' he wrote, but 'moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.' On a video podcast last year, Hegseth said: 'I'm straight up just 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.' (He has since walked back some of his earlier remarks. On the Megyn Kelly Show in early December, he said, 'If we have the right standard and women meet that standard, roger. Let's go.') During his confirmation process, Hegseth echoed President Trump's desire for a Pentagon focused on 'lethality, meritocracy, warfighting, accountability, and readiness.' It is worth noting that Gabrielle White was given no accommodations or special treatment, and at no point did the Ranger instructors adjust her score because she was a woman. Waiting to start the Malvesti Obstacle Course, Moore and Hokanson bounced from foot to foot and shook out their arms and legs. Both knew they had no more than four minutes of suffering before a break. When they got the order to go, Moore and Hokanson easily knocked out the six chin-ups and shimmied up the 30-foot rope. Jumping down a log ladder with nearly six feet between each rung barely slowed them down. Finishing the monkey bars over water put them on the edge of the notorious 'worm pit,' a shallow, muddy trench covered with barbed wire that would-be Rangers must crawl through—sometimes submerged—on their belly. Hokanson went first. Moore was next, slipping past the last rusty strand of wire and meeting Hokanson on the chin-up bar. Six more chin-ups and a run to the finish line later, they'd completed the obstacle course in three minutes and 35 seconds—a respectable time for rested soldiers, and an astonishing one for people who'd been going for almost 13 hours. They hadn't caught their breath before it was time for a pop quiz, which instructors give after some events to test competitors' cognitive powers. In which three conflicts did Army Colonel Richard Malvesti—the Ranger for whom the course is named—serve? (The answer, which Hokanson and Moore got right, was Vietnam, Grenada, and Operation Just Cause in Panama.) Before a night ruck march, the field would be narrowed to 32 pairs. In the holding area, Moore pulled off his boots and propped his swollen feet, chewed up with blisters from his wet socks, on his rucksack. He was exhausted, but he and Hokanson were in first place and Moore knew all eyes were on them. 'I'm going to act like this is the first thing I'm doing and I'm fresh,' Moore said. 'Everyone's going to look at me and realize that we are here to do business.' Competitors had deliberately not been told how long the ruck march would be, but at least they were hydrated and had gotten something to eat. When it was time, Moore laced up his boots once more. 'You look strong,' Hokanson told his partner. 'I don't know if you're faking it or if you're being serious, but you look strong.' Moore admitted afterward that he'd been faking it a little. Nevertheless, Team 44 took the lead and tore through the first four miles. Hokanson and Moore soon dumped their rucksacks to face the next test: They were each to carry two 45-pound water jugs for an unknown distance using only grip strength—no carrying the jugs on their shoulders, no wrist wraps, no resting the jugs on their feet, no setting them on the ground. As soon as one jug was set down, both men would have to stop and return to the starting line. The test, as the Ranger livestream commentator said, had a steep price for failure. Team 44 came in second, but had the most total points for the competition. Team 38—White and Deltenre—sat near the bottom of the table. Before the second day's events kicked off, the Rangers lay on the grass outside Doughboy Stadium, their boots and socks off. When they walked, they tended to do so with a grimace or a limp. Inside the stadium were six stations, including one where the soldiers had to breach doors with a torch, a saw, and fire-rescue tools. At the first station, teams would toss a 100-pound medicine ball over one shoulder between burpees—30 in all—before hauling a 290-pound yoke 50 meters. Then they'd each climb a 15-foot rope 10 times. Later they'd sprint to a dummy, bandage its fake wounds, and haul it roughly 50 yards on a stretcher sled back to the starting line. At the last station, they would throw axes before they retreated to a neighboring baseball field to throw practice grenades. For Team 44, this was light work. Moore, in particular, seemed to have a well of energy, and the men left the stadium area before lunch, giving them time to rest. More was at stake for White and Deltenre as they entered the stadium to cheers from their supporters; only 16 teams would advance to the third and final day, and Team 38 would need good scores to make it. After each burpee and medicine-ball throw, White and Deltenre encouraged each other to press on. They skipped the rope climb, incurring a penalty but saving energy for other events, and went on to win the axe throwing, which moved them up to 17th place. By the end of the afternoon, they were the only team that still seemed upbeat. They waited for the order to head toward the field where a Black Hawk helicopter would take them to Camp Darby for a mystery event before the night land-navigation test—historically the most difficult part of the competition. Once they got the order, White and Deltenre trotted to the helicopter. For the night event, each team would have five hours to find five points in the tangled swamps near Hollis Branch Creek without using any roads or trails. Hokanson took the lead on navigating for Team 44. Moore followed his partner's chem light as they bushwhacked through the swamp, in mud up to their knees, to the first point. But when they got across the swamp, Hokanson didn't see what he'd expected. Checking the map again, he realized they were going the wrong way. 'Kevin, I love you, but we're going to have to go through this again,' Hokanson said. 'Griff, I'm going to kill you,' Moore said. 'I'm going to wring your neck.' They had planned to hit one point each hour, but it took them almost two hours in the thorn brushes and mud to find the first one. With their bearings finally set, the men found two more points in under two hours and a fourth before the five-hour cutoff, leaving them with a lead of more than 100 points going into day three. (No team found all five points in the allotted time.) Team 38, meanwhile, ranked second in the night navigation event, securing themselves a spot for the final day. At 7:30 the next morning, as the first streaks of light came through the pine trees, the 16 remaining teams prepared to take on the Darby Queen, one of the toughest obstacle courses in the U.S. Army. The course comprises 24 stations made mostly of wood and rope set over a mile of rolling terrain. Some are as tall as three stories; others require crawling through trenches. Hokanson, who scored the fastest official solo time during the regiment's training period this year, moved effortlessly through them all, encouraging Moore as he went. They finished first, extending their lead. Next, the teams retreated to a field where they packed their gear and wrapped it with their ponchos to create a raft before boarding a helicopter for a short flight to Victory Pond. Sitting in the door of the helicopter with his legs dangling, Hokanson was shivering uncontrollably. After two full days of competition, he couldn't wait to complete the final tasks. The helicopter swooped past a rappelling tower and hovered over the middle of the lake. As the crew chief signaled for Team 44 to jump, they pushed their raft into the water before following it out. They swam their rucksacks to shore, then ran to a launch point where inflatable boats waited and paddled against the current, across the lake to the rappelling tower. One more water event and Team 44 could rest before the final run, whose distance the competitors did not know. The Combat Water Survival Assessment, which also must be completed during the beginning of Ranger School, starts at the bottom of a 35-foot-tall metal ladder. From the top, with no safety harness, Moore calmly walked across a log suspended above the pond. He shimmied across a rope, plunged into the water and swam to a dock, then ran back and tagged Hokanson, who started up the 35-foot ladder to the suspended log. Moore, meanwhile, headed for a 70-foot tower. At the top of the tower's staircase, he slid down on a pulley attached to a suspended cable, and crashed into the pond. All of these tasks were timed. Even though their lead was insurmountable this late in the competition, Hokanson and Moore ran through the course at full speed; they didn't want to leave any doubt. They came in fourth for the event, all but assuring their victory. Now the only thing left to do was run the final road race. Team 43—another 75th Regiment team, made up of Sergeants Emerson Schroeder and Tyler Steadman—was in third place but wanted to use this last event to push for second. When it was time to run, they kept a near-superhuman pace after having been almost constantly active for three days, and won the 4.1-mile race in about 30 minutes, becoming the first team to raise its rifles at the finish line. Team 44 came in third in the race, and first in the overall competition. As they approached the finish line, Hokanson was so tired that he couldn't lift his rifle above his head. Tears welled up in his eyes as blood ran from his face onto his bib. The loudest cheers were for Team 38, which finished the run second to last. Overall, though, White and Deltenre ended the competition 14th out of the 52 teams. After raising their rifles, they hugged and went to get checked by the medics, a standard safety precaution. Kris Fuhr was at the finish line with the other Team 38 supporters. Watching White raise her rifle at the end of the race felt like validation, she told me, for the work she and her peers had done to make the military a more hospitable place for the women who came after them. Jackie Munn: I felt more welcome in combat than I did on base For their part, White's opponents seemed to respect her. 'Anyone who makes it to day three and finishes the competition has achieved a standard far beyond anything in the Army,' Hokanson said. In his speech at the awards ceremony, General Randy A. George, the Army chief of staff, asked a question that had hung over the whole three days: Why does the Army put so much time and so many resources into the Best Ranger Competition? 'Our Army is the best in the world,' George told the audience. 'When tested in battle, we prevail time and again. Rangers are the best of our Army.' Later, I asked George whether he thought that this generation of soldiers was less lethal than those that came before. 'I don't buy that,' George said, shaking his head. In fact, he said, if you compare Rangers over the past three decades, today's are at least as capable as their predecessors—maybe even more so. 'Everybody's going to have to shoot, move, and communicate on the modern battlefield,' George said. 'They're going to have to be absolute experts at that. And that's what you get with any Ranger formation.' Toward the end of the awards ceremony, George challenged every Ranger onstage to take what they'd learned and use it to inspire excellence among their peers. 'Go back to your units and build Rangers,' he said. 'Challenge your troops. Test them and push them. Send them to school and set expectations that they come home Ranger-qualified. Hold them accountable to being tough and lethal.' In my conversations with the competitors, I saw this ethic firsthand. The Rangers had trained for months not in the hopes of attaining fame or fortune but for the chance to exceed even their own expectations. Perhaps this is why, after the competition ended, none of the soldiers I spoke with brought up the fact that this year's Best Ranger Competition had made history by being the first to include a woman—not because they did not want to draw attention to White or her performance but because the days-long physical and mental challenge demanded everything they had, leaving them no time to think about anything but putting one foot in front of the other.
Atlantic
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Will Pete Hegseth's ‘War on Woke' Sideline Women?
In 12 and a half minutes or less, you must: Run half a mile; scramble up a six-foot wall; lift 16 sandbags, each one roughly the weight of a 6-year-old child; drag a stretcher 100 meters; complete a farmer's carry with a pair of 40-pound water cans; then run another half mile. Quickly take a breath. Then run four eight-minute miles and finish off with six chin-ups. That's just day one at Ranger School, the arduous 62-day Army leadership course that washes out half of those who try. Since the military opened ground-combat units to women, in 2016, 160 have earned their Ranger tabs. And in the vision that Pete Hegseth laid out days before being tapped as defense secretary last year, none of them belong on the front lines. 'I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,' the Fox News host told a podcaster in November. 'It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.' But to win confirmation as America's 29th defense secretary, Hegseth needed votes from senators, one of whom, in particular, was a woman who had served in combat. Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who commanded troops in Iraq and Kuwait, remained a holdout. With his future riding on her vote, the nominee suggested under oath that his views had evolved. It wasn't that he was against women in combat, per se. It was just that he wanted to uphold military excellence. 'Yes, women will have access to ground-combat roles, given the standards remain high,' Hegseth assured the senator at his confirmation hearing. Who could argue with high standards? Ernst voted yes and, with a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J. D. Vance, Hegseth's nomination squeaked by, 51–50. Six months into his tenure at the Pentagon, the secretary has not announced any plans to reverse the Obama administration's 2013 decision to open all combat roles to women. But he is moving ahead with an effort to review and potentially overhaul combat and physical-fitness standards. Some view the push as a backdoor attempt to achieve the same goal. This spring, Hegseth dispatched a newly created team of advisers to elite units and military schools—including bases where Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and Rangers are trained—looking for evidence of lowered standards. According to internal documents I obtained, members of the Secretary of Defense Assessment Team, which is headed by Hegseth's adviser Eric Geressy, conducted the visits with a goal to 'review and restore training standards' for elite units. In a previously unreported move, the documents also indicate a plan to 'conduct a new review on Women in Combat (training/warfighting) Study.' 'We do not have the luxury to lower the standards in order to accommodate the lowest common denominator,' the document states. 'Service members want a challenge they do not want to be part of a loosing [ sic ] team and want to serve alongside the best.' During their visits to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia; and the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado, California, members of Hegseth's assessment team requested detailed information about performance, including raw data on individual candidates. Hegseth's suspicion that standards are slipping defies what military officials have told me again and again in recent months: that although all troops must take regular physical-fitness tests specific to their military service, most of which are adjusted for age and gender, they must also undergo separate, so-called occupational tests that are gender-neutral. For combat units, those include intense physical requirements far more strenuous than what other troops must do. An infantry soldier is going to have to sweat more than an accountant. Those job-related standards, the officials have told me, have not been lowered to accommodate women. 'There are myths that have been propagated, and what he's doing is ginning up that myth again,' one person familiar with Hegseth's review told me. A quarter of the way into the 21st century, drones and digital weapons arguably matter more in warfare than push-ups and pull-ups. But in a military styled after the proclivities of Donald Trump and Hegseth, any whiff of special treatment for women or people of color must be eradicated. And changing the physical-fitness standards might turn out to be a means to a more ambitious end, one that could alter the landscape for women in uniform and send a deterrent message to women wishing to join. 'They definitely have a solution in search of a problem,' said the person familiar with the review who, like others, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity. 'He keeps looking for data to show that standards have been lowered, and that women can't hack it.' The only trouble? The person told me that 'there is no data like that.' Women make up roughly 20 percent of today's military, but until recently, their roles were sharply limited. Women were not permitted to fly in combat aviation units until 1993 or serve on submarines until 2010. Although thousands of women served on the front lines in support roles in two decades of counterinsurgent warfare following 9/11, they remained officially barred from combat until the past decade. In 2013, Barack Obama's second defense secretary, Leon Panetta, announced that the ban on women serving in ground-combat roles would end in the coming years. 'Not everyone is going to be able to be a combat soldier,' Panetta said at the time. 'But everyone is entitled to a chance.' In late 2015, after a divisive internal review, Ashton Carter, Obama's fourth and final defense secretary, ordered the integration of some 200,000 ground-combat roles. Physical and other standards for those units would remain gender-neutral, Carter cautioned, and there would be no quotas for female participation. Of the military services, only the Marine Corps dissented, citing a study that found that mixed-gender Marine units did not perform as well as all-male units. (Carter and others cited flaws with the study, and the Marines were integrated along with the others.) Since then, female officers have commanded armor and artillery platoons and moved into other ground-combat jobs. Roughly 500 female Marines currently serve in combat roles. Still, the share of women in ground-combat units remains tiny. Fewer than 10 women have passed the Army Special Operations Command's demanding 'Q Course' to become Special Forces soldiers, and no woman has become a Navy SEAL. Of the 1,400 soldiers who completed Ranger School last year, the overwhelming majority were men. After his nomination, Hegseth was careful to praise women's 'indispendable role' in the military, as he told the podcaster Megyn Kelly in December. 'The women of the Pentagon, of our military, are revered, appreciated,' he said. 'All I've really ever cared about is making sure the standards are maintained.' But Hegseth's problem with women in ground-combat units wasn't just operational; it was moral. In a book he published a few months earlier, Hegseth devotes a chapter to what he calls 'the (deadly) obsession with women warriors.' Women can serve as pilots and support troops, and they may sometimes find themselves in the cross fire of the modern battlefield. But placing them in infantry or artillery units, Hegseth argues, causes problems. It distracts male soldiers from their core mission, forces them to compensate for female soldiers' lesser strength and smaller body size, and makes casualties more likely. Spineless uniformed leaders, ceding to Democratic demands over the past decade, have watered down combat standards to accommodate women, he writes, leaving the military weaker. Thrusting women into jobs focused on killing would also disrupt traditional gender norms. 'Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,' he writes. 'We need moms. But not in the military, and especially not in combat roles. ' Hegseth compares what he sees as the unrealistic goal of willing women's physical strength to match that of men's with America's failed attempts to impose democracy on Afghanistan. He rails against decisions made by the 'so-called enlightened class' that would end up costing service member lives. 'They don't care how many battles we lose as long as our dead are diverse,' he writes. In the weeks after he arrived at the Pentagon in January, Hegseth moved quickly to eliminate what he publicly derided as 'woke bullshit,' in line with an executive order that Trump issued on Inauguration Day. Pentagon officials launched a chaotic effort to take down online content containing references to race or gender, removing webpages featuring the first female fighter pilot and Ranger graduate, along with others celebrating the Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson. The Pentagon reinstated a ban on transgender service members and suspended advisory boards on women in the services. In February, the president abruptly fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first-ever female chief of naval operations, and General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, only the second Black officer to hold that job. Hegseth had attacked both officers in his book for being excessively focused on race or being diversity hires. Neither has commented publicly about their firing. Hegseth has highlighted the progress the military has made in 'reviving the warrior ethos' and eradicating Democratic administrations' misplaced focus on diversity in the ranks. In Hegseth's view, there was no racism or sexism problem to fix, so drawing attention to those issues just stirred up discord. Speaking to Special Operations forces in May, Hegseth said that troops 'want to be in disciplined formations that value them not for immutable differences, not for the color of our skin, or gender, but because of honor and integrity and grit and patriotism.' He added: 'They want a meritocracy where they can work hard, make themselves better, kick ass and rise up.' For Hegseth, physical fitness is a trait of the utmost importance. As he told soldiers at the Army War College in April, service members must be 'fit, not fat; sharp, not shabby.' Pentagon social media has emphasized his morning physical-training sessions with the troops, doing push-ups from Warsaw to Omaha Beach. The secretary has vowed that standards will be 'high, equal, and unwavering.' In March, Hegseth announced a military-wide review of combat and physical-fitness standards, ordering Pentagon officials to develop plans to distinguish between combat and noncombat jobs and to ensure proper requirements for those roles, including 'the ability to carry heavy loads' and exhibiting 'speed, strength, agility, and endurance.' To that order, Hegseth added a handwritten addendum: 'No existing standard will be lowered in this process.' In a video released shortly afterward, Hegseth strides along the corridor outside his Pentagon office, speaking straight to the camera as he explains the initiative as a commonsense fix to the military's failure to enact equal and adequate standards when it integrated women into combat roles. Last month, in an echo of his earlier, pre-nomination statements, Hegseth posted on his personal X account a news article about Israel's decision to end a trial program that placed women in combat positions, because of the difficulty they faced in meeting physical requirements. 'Worthy [ sic ] paying attention to,' he wrote. 'Israel takes standards & testing very seriously.' But in those statements, Hegseth has repeatedly mischaracterized the status quo. Notably, Hegseth has not been able to identify evidence of lowered combat requirements in the U.S. military. Instead, the secretary and his supporters have pointed to standards being 'informally' lowered, suggesting without evidence that women have been waved through Ranger School or given extra chances because of mandates or pressure from politically attuned bosses. Spokespeople for Naval Special Warfare, which trains Navy SEALs; for Army Special Operations Command, which trains Special Forces soldiers; and for Fort Benning, where Ranger School is located, all said they have gender-neutral standards. 'We ensure our data-[validated], operationally validated, and gender-neutral standards are building the warfighter for today and the future,' Lieutenant Colonel Allie Scott, a spokesperson for Army Special Operations, told me. Jennifer Gunn, a spokesperson at Fort Benning, told me that opportunities to repeat phases of the Ranger course, known as 'recycling,' are based on performance. 'No demographic or group is afforded preferential treatment,' she said. One retired female officer who completed Ranger School told me that many men, like many women, who attempt to go into combat jobs are unable to meet the standards. But some from both genders will excel. 'The thing that bothers me about the rhetoric about standards being lowered is that no one can exactly tell you what they mean. Was it pull-ups? Was it something else?' the female Ranger School graduate said. 'It feels like a sound bite.' Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, in a statement, said that combat-position standards would 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.' Katherine Kuzminski, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, told me that that is already the case, at least in terms of occupational standards. She said Hegseth's rhetoric may resonate because of the confusing nature of physical and occupational tests across services and military specialties. 'When you look at the broader picture of Hegseth's previous writings and comments, it sends a message that somehow women aren't meeting the mark,' Kuzminski said. 'In reality, the sex-neutral standards he lays out as his goal in the memo already exist in combat specialities." Hegseth's critics suspect he knows that but has other motives in mind. 'We need to make sure that there isn't some sort of surreptitious effort ongoing to try to narrow the people who are allowed to serve,' Democratic Representative Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, an Air Force veteran, told me. 'I think there is a kind of a lurking theory that the only kind of warrior is a 6-foot-4-inch male Christian guy from the South. But there is also, increasingly, a place for people who are also able to complement that—a warrior who is a thinker, or an engineer, or a number of other kinds of things.' Houlahan and others caution that, despite the recent recruiting boost that Trump and Hegseth are touting, Americans' propensity to serve has undergone a long decline, now hovering around 11 percent. America's future military will need women to help fill the ranks. Hegseth's review poses a different challenge for the Navy and the Air Force than it does for the infantry-focused Army and Marine Corps. A fighter pilot most certainly is in combat, but his or her job has much different physical requirements than a Marine's on the front lines. Serving as a cook on a big ship isn't normally considered a combat job, but that sailor may be called to command the guns in the event of an attack. And what makes sense for Space Force service members who might sit at a computer all day operating a satellite? The Navy has age- and gender-normed general physical-fitness standards and separate age- and gender-neutral fitness and occupational standards for six elite professions, including Navy divers, rescue swimmers, and technicians who, among other duties, neutralize underwater explosives. A bomb-disposal tech, for example, must do, in two minutes each, a minimum of six pull-ups and at least 50 push-ups and 50 curl-ups, plus a 500-yard swim and 1.5-mile run in fewer than 21 minutes. The Air Force has a similar system: gender- and age-adjusted physical-fitness tests for the whole force and then heightened, age- and gender-neutral physical tests for a subset of jobs more similar to ground combat, including combat control and pararescue. Those individuals must perform tasks including carrying a 60-pound load three miles in under 49 minutes and deadlifting at least 270 pounds. 'We don't care how old you are. We do not care what sex you are,' one Air Force official said of those specialties. 'Here is the bar. If you're going to be in this career field, you must meet it.' All Marines take two different age- and gender-normed fitness tests each year. In addition, Marines in ground-combat roles, regardless of gender, must take an additional job-specific physical test that is gender- and age-neutral. A Marine rifleman, male or female, must simulate evacuating a 205-pound casualty 50 meters, for example, and scaling a 56-inch wall, all while also carrying their 55-pound fighting load. The Army has had perhaps the most winding, emotionally charged physical-fitness saga. Last year, a Republican amendment to an annual defense bill mandated higher standards for combat jobs. To help determine what the new minimum standards for those jobs might be, the Army asked RAND to conduct a study that, among other things, showed a drop-off in pass rates for women and National Guard and Reserves soldiers when standards were raised past a certain level. Before Joe Biden left office, Army leaders decided to raise the standards for those combat jobs but keep them gender-normed. The Army changed course after the Trump administration took over, opting for a gender-neutral standard for 21 combat specialties. An Army official told me that Trump's new Army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, 'was very much, 'Let's have high standards and whoever meets those standards, we're good to go,'' the official said. But in a curious move that the Army has struggled to explain, it kept the test age-adjusted for those jobs, even though the argument for a sole standard had long been that combat doesn't care who you are—your age, identity, or gender. Another Army official said that the service's leadership believed that aligning with Hegseth's priorities would benefit the Army. 'I don't know how many push-ups you have to do to survive on the battlefield,' the official told me. 'But I do know that more is better.' Many female veterans support gender-neutral, job-related standards. 'Women should be allowed to try and fail,' the female Ranger School graduate told me. 'You should want people to go to Ranger School. If they fail, maybe they'll go back and retrain.' Samantha Weeks, a former fighter pilot who served as a member of a Pentagon advisory board on women until it was suspended, recalled having to bench 80 percent of her body weight when she was in pilot training in the late 1990s. It was hard, but achievable. 'I think there is not a woman out there in the military who doesn't want the standard to be the standard,' she told me. But many current and former officials also say the military needs to do a better job in developing evidence-based physical criteria. 'You just have to make sure the requirements are rational to the role and aren't a vestige of a different era,' Alex Wagner, who served as the Air Force's assistant secretary for personnel during the Biden administration, told me. 'Pete Hegseth's understanding of the military seems frozen in 1980s action films. But today's battlefield isn't going to be Rambo hacking his way through jungles.' Eliot A. Cohen: The U.S. needs soldiers, not warriors Pentagon officials say they have been informed that Hegseth's office is preparing to release a new, military-wide physical-fitness test. It was not immediately clear whether that test, should it materialize, would replace the service tests or whether it would be gender-neutral. Any significantly higher standard could have the greatest impact on National Guard and Reserves troops, which typically do worse on fitness exams than active-duty personnel. Weeks, the former fighter pilot, recalled being the only female pilot in her squadron when she flew long missions over Iraq as part of Operation Northern Watch in 2000. Unable to use the 'piddle pack' that male pilots used to relieve themselves, and unwilling to opt for 'tactical dehydration,' which could be dangerous during a 12-hour mission, she used a DIY solution involving a neonatal face mask and a surgical tube. In the years since, women have expanded their presence across the force and, along the way, earned greater recognition that they may have different needs, but that doesn't mean that they're less capable of doing the job. This year, the Air Force rolled out a new alternative for the male piddle pack to make missions easier for female pilots. 'I had men who told me, 'I don't want to talk about that. Go find a female,'' Weeks recalled of trying to find support in her unit. ''Well, what female can I talk to?' I said. 'There are no others.''
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Should women be in combat?
Women weren't allowed to officially serve in combat jobs when Emelie Vanasse started her ROTC program at George Washington University. Instead, she used her biology degree to serve as a medical officer — but it still bothered Vanasse to be shut out of something just because she was a woman. 'I always felt like, who really has the audacity to tell me that I can't be in combat arms? I'm resilient, I am tough, I can make decisions in stressful environments,' Vanasse said. By 2015, the Obama administration opened all combat jobs to women, despite a plea from senior leaders in the Marine Corps to keep certain frontline units male only. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters that, 'We cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country's talents and skills.' The policy change meant that women could attend Ranger school, the training ground for the Army Rangers, an elite special operations infantry unit. When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate from the school in 2015, Vanasse taped their photos to her desk and swore she would be next, no matter what it took. She went on to become one of the first women to serve as an Army infantry officer and graduated from Ranger school in 2017. After the Pentagon integrated women into combat jobs, the services developed specific fitness standards for jobs like infantry and armor with equal standards for men and women. Special operations and other highly specialized units require additional qualification courses that are also gender-neutral. To continue past the first day of Ranger school, candidates must pass the Ranger Physical Fitness test, for which there is only one standard. Only the semi-annual fitness tests that service members take, which vary by branch, are scaled for age and gender. Despite that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to insist that the standards were lowered for combat roles. In a podcast interview in November, Hegseth said, 'We've changed the standards in putting [women in combat], which means you've changed the capability of that unit.' (Despite Hegseth's remark, many women worked alongside male infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing the same dangerous conditions.) In the same interview, Hegseth said that he didn't believe women should serve in combat roles. In March, Hegseth ordered the military services to make the basic fitness standards for all combat jobs gender-neutral. The Army is the first service to comply: Beginning June 1, most combat specialties will require women to meet the male standard for basic physical fitness, something most women serving in active-duty combat roles are already able to do. Vanasse told Noel King on Today, Explained what it was like to attend Ranger School at a time when some men didn't want to see a woman in the ranks. What is Ranger School? I went to Ranger School on January 1, 2017. I woke up at 3 am that day in Fort Benning, Georgia, shaved my head, a quarter-inch all the way around, just like the men. Took my last hot shower, choked down some French toast, and then I drove to Camp Rogers, and I remember being very acutely aware of the pain that the school would inflict, both physically and mentally. I was also very aware that there was kind of half of this population of objective graders that just kind of hated my guts for even showing up. They hated you for showing up because you're a woman? Back in 2016 and 2017, it was so new to have women in Ranger School. I used to think, I don't have to just be good, I have to be lucky. I have to get a grader who is willing to let a woman pass. I had dark times at that school. I tasted real failure. I sat under a poncho in torrential rain and I shivered so hard my whole body cramped. I put on a ruck that weighed 130 pounds and I crawled up a mountain on my hands and knees. I hallucinated a donut shop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains and I cried one morning when someone told me I had to get out of my sleeping bag. But I think all of those experiences are quintessential Ranger School experiences. They're what everyone goes through there. And I think the point of the school is that failure, that suffering, it's not inherently bad, right? In a way, I like to think Ranger School was the most simplistic form of gender integration that ever could have happened because if I was contributing to the team, there was no individual out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. When you wanted to give up, what did you tell yourself? What was going through your head? I don't think I ever considered quitting Ranger School. I just knew that it was something that I could get through and had the confidence to continue. I had a thought going in of What could be so bad that would make me quit? and the answer that I found throughout the school was, Nothing. Did you ever feel like they had lowered the standards for you compared to the men who were alongside you? No. Never. I did the same thing that the men did. I did the same Ranger physical fitness test that all the men took. I ran five miles in 40 minutes. I did 49 pushups, 59 situps, six pullups. I rucked 12 miles in three hours with a 45-pound ruck. I climbed the same mountains. I carried the same stuff. I carried the same exact packing list they did, plus 250 tampons for some reason. At no point were the standards lowered for me. Whose idea was it for you to carry 250 tampons? It was not mine! It was a misguided effort to have everyone very prepared for the first women coming through Ranger School. In Ranger School, there's only one standard for the fitness test. Everybody has to meet it, and that allows you to get out of Ranger School and say, 'Look, fellas, I took the same test as the men and I passed.' Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying that Army combat jobs should only have one standard of fitness for both men and women. And there's part of me that thinks: Doesn't that allow the women who meet the standards to be like, look, I think gender-neutral standards for combat arms are very important. It should not be discounted how important physical fitness is for combat arms. I think there's nuance in determining what is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But it's an important thing. And there have been gender-neutral standards for combat arms. In things like Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, which is the initial basic training for officers going into the infantry, there are gender-neutral standards that you have to meet: You have to run five miles in 40 minutes, you have to do a 12-mile ruck. All of those standards have remained the same. Pete Hegseth is specifically referring to the Army Combat Physical Fitness test, and to a certain extent I agree, it should be gender-neutral for combat arms. But I think there's nuance in determining what exactly combat arms entails physically. Secretary Hegseth has a lot to say about women, and sometimes he says it directly and sometimes he alludes to it. What he often does is he talks about lethality as something that is critically important for the military. He says the Army in particular needs more of it, but he never really defines what he means by lethality. What is the definition as you understand it? There's a component of lethality that is physical fitness and it should not be discounted. But lethality extends far beyond that, right? It's tactical skills, it's decision-making, it's leadership, it's grit, it's the ability to build trust and instill purpose and a group of people. It's how quick a fire team in my platoon can react to contact. How well my SAW [Squad Automatic Weapon] gunner can shoot, how quickly I can employ and integrate combat assets, how fast I can maneuver a squad. All of those things take physical fitness, but they certainly take more than just physical fitness. There's more to lethality than just how fast you can run and how many pushups you can do. To an average civilian like myself, I hear lethality and I think of the dictionary definition, the ability to kill. Does this definition of lethality involve the ability, physically and emotionally and psychologically, to kill another person? Absolutely. And so when Secretary Hegseth casts doubt on the ability of women to be as lethal as men, do you think there's some stuff baked in there that maybe gets to his idea of what women are willing and able to do? Yes, possibly. I think the [secretary's] message is pretty clear. According to him, the women in combat arms achieved success because the standards were lowered for them. We were never accommodated and the standards were never lowered. What's your response, then, to hearing the Secretary of Defense say women don't belong in combat? It makes me irate, to be honest. Like, it's just a complete discounting of all of the accomplishments of the women that came before us. Do you think that if Secretary Hegseth could take a look at what you did in Ranger School, and he could hear from you that there were no second chances, there were no excuses, there was no babying, the men didn't treat you nicer just because you were a woman, do you think he'd change his mind about women serving in combat? I'd like to think he would, but I've met plenty of people whose minds couldn't be changed by reality. I'd love it if he went to Ranger School. He has a lot of opinions about Ranger School for someone who does not have his Ranger tab. What is a Ranger tab, for civilians? A Ranger tab is what you receive upon graduating Ranger School, which means you have passed all three phases and you are now Ranger-qualified in the military. You have that. And the Secretary of Defense doesn't. He does not, though he has a lot of opinions about Ranger School.
Vox
31-05-2025
- Politics
- Vox
Should women be in combat?
Women weren't allowed to officially serve in combat jobs when Emelie Vanasse started her ROTC program at George Washington University. Instead, she used her biology degree to serve as a medical officer — but it still bothered Vanasse to be shut out of something just because she was a woman. 'I always felt like, who really has the audacity to tell me that I can't be in combat arms? I'm resilient, I am tough, I can make decisions in stressful environments,' Vanasse said. By 2015, the Obama administration opened all combat jobs to women, despite a plea from senior leaders in the Marine Corps to keep certain frontline units male only. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters that, 'We cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country's talents and skills.' The policy change meant that women could attend Ranger school, the training ground for the Army Rangers, an elite special operations infantry unit. When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate from the school in 2015, Vanasse taped their photos to her desk and swore she would be next, no matter what it took. She went on to become one of the first women to serve as an Army infantry officer and graduated from Ranger school in 2017. After the Pentagon integrated women into combat jobs, the services developed specific fitness standards for jobs like infantry and armor with equal standards for men and women. Special operations and other highly specialized units require additional qualification courses that are also gender-neutral. To continue past the first day of Ranger school, candidates must pass the Ranger Physical Fitness test, for which there is only one standard. Only the semi-annual fitness tests that service members take, which vary by branch, are scaled for age and gender. Despite that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to insist that the standards were lowered for combat roles. In a podcast interview in November, Hegseth said, 'We've changed the standards in putting [women in combat], which means you've changed the capability of that unit.' (Despite Hegseth's remark, many women worked alongside male infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing the same dangerous conditions.) In the same interview, Hegseth said that he didn't believe women should serve in combat roles. In March, Hegseth ordered the military services to make the basic fitness standards for all combat jobs gender-neutral. The Army is the first service to comply: Beginning June 1, most combat specialties will require women to meet the male standard for basic physical fitness, something most women serving in active-duty combat roles are already able to do. Vanasse told Noel King on Today, Explained what it was like to attend Ranger School at a time when some men didn't want to see a woman in the ranks. What is Ranger School? I went to Ranger School on January 1, 2017. I woke up at 3 am that day in Fort Benning, Georgia, shaved my head, a quarter-inch all the way around, just like the men. Took my last hot shower, choked down some French toast, and then I drove to Camp Rogers, and I remember being very acutely aware of the pain that the school would inflict, both physically and mentally. I was also very aware that there was kind of half of this population of objective graders that just kind of hated my guts for even showing up. They hated you for showing up because you're a woman? Back in 2016 and 2017, it was so new to have women in Ranger School. I used to think, I don't have to just be good, I have to be lucky. I have to get a grader who is willing to let a woman pass. I had dark times at that school. I tasted real failure. I sat under a poncho in torrential rain and I shivered so hard my whole body cramped. I put on a ruck that weighed 130 pounds and I crawled up a mountain on my hands and knees. I hallucinated a donut shop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains and I cried one morning when someone told me I had to get out of my sleeping bag. But I think all of those experiences are quintessential Ranger School experiences. They're what everyone goes through there. And I think the point of the school is that failure, that suffering, it's not inherently bad, right? In a way, I like to think Ranger School was the most simplistic form of gender integration that ever could have happened because if I was contributing to the team, there was no individual out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. When you wanted to give up, what did you tell yourself? What was going through your head? I don't think I ever considered quitting Ranger School. I just knew that it was something that I could get through and had the confidence to continue. I had a thought going in of What could be so bad that would make me quit? and the answer that I found throughout the school was, Nothing. Did you ever feel like they had lowered the standards for you compared to the men who were alongside you? No. Never. I did the same thing that the men did. I did the same Ranger physical fitness test that all the men took. I ran five miles in 40 minutes. I did 49 pushups, 59 situps, six pullups. I rucked 12 miles in three hours with a 45-pound ruck. I climbed the same mountains. I carried the same stuff. I carried the same exact packing list they did, plus 250 tampons for some reason. At no point were the standards lowered for me. Whose idea was it for you to carry 250 tampons? It was not mine! It was a misguided effort to have everyone very prepared for the first women coming through Ranger School. In Ranger School, there's only one standard for the fitness test. Everybody has to meet it, and that allows you to get out of Ranger School and say, 'Look, fellas, I took the same test as the men and I passed.' Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying that Army combat jobs should only have one standard of fitness for both men and women. And there's part of me that thinks: Doesn't that allow the women who meet the standards to be like, look, We met the same standards as the men. Nothing suspicious here, guys. I think gender-neutral standards for combat arms are very important. It should not be discounted how important physical fitness is for combat arms. I think there's nuance in determining what is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But it's an important thing. And there have been gender-neutral standards for combat arms. In things like Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, which is the initial basic training for officers going into the infantry, there are gender-neutral standards that you have to meet: You have to run five miles in 40 minutes, you have to do a 12-mile ruck. All of those standards have remained the same. Pete Hegseth is specifically referring to the Army Combat Physical Fitness test, and to a certain extent I agree, it should be gender-neutral for combat arms. But I think there's nuance in determining what exactly combat arms entails physically. Secretary Hegseth has a lot to say about women, and sometimes he says it directly and sometimes he alludes to it. What he often does is he talks about lethality as something that is critically important for the military. He says the Army in particular needs more of it, but he never really defines what he means by lethality. What is the definition as you understand it? There's a component of lethality that is physical fitness and it should not be discounted. But lethality extends far beyond that, right? It's tactical skills, it's decision-making, it's leadership, it's grit, it's the ability to build trust and instill purpose and a group of people. It's how quick a fire team in my platoon can react to contact. How well my SAW [Squad Automatic Weapon] gunner can shoot, how quickly I can employ and integrate combat assets, how fast I can maneuver a squad. All of those things take physical fitness, but they certainly take more than just physical fitness. There's more to lethality than just how fast you can run and how many pushups you can do. To an average civilian like myself, I hear lethality and I think of the dictionary definition, the ability to kill. Does this definition of lethality involve the ability, physically and emotionally and psychologically, to kill another person? Absolutely. And so when Secretary Hegseth casts doubt on the ability of women to be as lethal as men, do you think there's some stuff baked in there that maybe gets to his idea of what women are willing and able to do? Yes, possibly. I think the [secretary's] message is pretty clear. According to him, the women in combat arms achieved success because the standards were lowered for them. We were never accommodated and the standards were never lowered. What's your response, then, to hearing the Secretary of Defense say women don't belong in combat? It makes me irate, to be honest. Like, it's just a complete discounting of all of the accomplishments of the women that came before us. Do you think that if Secretary Hegseth could take a look at what you did in Ranger School, and he could hear from you that there were no second chances, there were no excuses, there was no babying, the men didn't treat you nicer just because you were a woman, do you think he'd change his mind about women serving in combat? I'd like to think he would, but I've met plenty of people whose minds couldn't be changed by reality. I'd love it if he went to Ranger School. He has a lot of opinions about Ranger School for someone who does not have his Ranger tab. What is a Ranger tab, for civilians? A Ranger tab is what you receive upon graduating Ranger School, which means you have passed all three phases and you are now Ranger-qualified in the military. You have that. And the Secretary of Defense doesn't.
News18
16-05-2025
- Politics
- News18
Operation Sindoor Strategic Success, Decisive Indian Victory, Says Modern War Institute's John Spencer
Last Updated: The operation wasn't just tactical success, says Spencer, but also 'a doctrinal execution under live fire' Operation Sindoor met and exceeded its strategic aims—destroying terrorist infrastructure, demonstrating military superiority, restoring deterrence, and unveiling a new national security doctrine—says John W Spencer, a retired United States Army officer, researcher of urban warfare, and author. 'This was not symbolic force. It was decisive power, clearly applied," says Spencer. 'This wasn't just tactical success. It was doctrinal execution under live fire." Spencer serves as the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute. During his military career, he was an infantry platoon leader and company commander, including two combat tours during the Iraq War. In Iraq, Spencer served during the initial invasion in 2003 and later in 2008 during the Iraq War troop surge and the Battle of Sadr City. He was also assigned to Ranger School, Joint Chiefs of Staff, etc. Later, he became a fellow with the chief of staff of the Strategic Studies Group, until he moved to the Modern War Institute (MWI). According to him, the following strategic effects were achieved by India through Operation Sindoor: 1. A New Red Line Was Drawn—and Enforced: Terror attacks from Pakistani soil will now be met with military force. That's not a threat. It's precedent. 2. Military Superiority Demonstrated: India showcased its ability to strike any target in Pakistan at will—terror sites, drone coordination hubs, even airbases. Meanwhile, Pakistan was unable to penetrate a single defended area inside India. That is not parity. That is overwhelming superiority. And that is how real deterrence is established. 3. Restored Deterrence: India retaliated forcefully but stopped short of full war. The controlled escalation sent a clear deterrent signal: India will respond, and it controls the pace. 4. Asserted Strategic Independence: India handled this crisis without seeking international mediation. It enforced doctrine on sovereign terms, using sovereign means. The halt in operations is not the end of Operation Sindoor, says Spencer. According to him, it is a pause. India holds the initiative: if provoked again, it will strike again. 'Operation Sindoor was a modern war—fought under the shadow of nuclear escalation, with global attention, and within a limited objective framework," Spencer says. 'And by every measure that matters, it was a strategic success—and a decisive Indian victory." First Published: May 17, 2025, 00:16 IST
