Pentagon will loosen restrictions on women in combat zones

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon will take a small step Thursday and announce that women will be formally permitted in crucial and dangerous jobs closer to the front lines, but the new rules stop short of officially allowing them to serve in combat.

The decision, the result of a year-long Pentagon review, allows women to be permanently assigned to a battalion -- a unit of some 800 personnel -- as radio operators, medics, tank operators and other critical jobs.

In actual practice, however, women already serve in those roles, but as temporary "attachments" to battalions. The bureaucratic sidestep has been necessary with the high demand for troops during the past decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new rules, which reflect the steady but glacial evolution of the role of American women in war, also keep in place a ban on women serving in the infantry, in combat tank units and in the Special Operations Commando Units. In reality, women in both Iraq and Afghanistan have often been "attached" to infantry foot patrols, and have come under fire and fought back. More than 140 women in the U.S. military have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The new rules are to take effected this summer. A senior defense official said Thursday that the Pentagon was still reviewing whether women should serve in combat -- essential for career advancement in the military -- but that "this is not something you can change overnight."

In the meantime, a number of advocates for women in the military reacted with dismay.

"It's a really, really tiny step forward," said Anu Bhagwati, a former Marine Corps captain and the executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, an advocacy group for women in the military. "We were hoping for more."

Some military women, among them more senior officers, still say that women do not belong in the infantry because of the physical demands and close quarters with men. Many men in the Army and Marine Corps said they felt the same way. Bhagwati disagreed.

"We're not talking about opening up the infantry to every woman, but the women who do want to try these jobs, who are we to say that they can't?" she said. "It's a simple fairness argument. A lot of women will leave service early when they know their career path is limited."

The co-president of the National Women's Law Center, Nancy Duff Campbell, said on Thursday that while she applauded the Pentagon's announcement, it did not go far enough. She said the remaining restrictions "fail to recognize that there are no longer clear-cut front lines and that women have already been performing superbly in a broad range of vital combat roles."

Nearly 15 percent of the nation's 1.5 million active-duty military personnel are women, and more than 255,000 women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nonetheless, even some male military officers who say that women might be strong enough for the infantry acknowledged some psychological barriers.

"I think the infantry in me will have a very hard time ever accepting that I'm going to rush against the enemy and there's going to be a female right next to me," Capt. Scott A. Cuomo, a company commander of 270 Marines in Afghanistan and a strong supporter of women in the military, said in an interview in 2010. "Can she do it? Some might. I don't know if this sounds bad, but I kind of look at everything through my wife. Is that my wife's job? No. My job is to make sure my wife is safe."