Ban Urged on Women in Most Combat Roles

In a series of narrow votes with potentially far-reaching political significance, a presidential commission Tuesday recommended barring women from serving in most combat roles, including flying combat aircraft.

The 15-member commission, however, said that the Navy should consider opening its surface combat ships to women, who currently are restricted to just 66 noncombat ships in the 450-ship fleet.

The panel voted 8 to 6 with one abstention to repeal existing laws and modify service policies on women serving on combatant vessels. They recommended retaining the current ban on women aboard submarines and amphibious vessels but allowing them to serve for the first time on fighting ships such as destroyers, frigates and aircraft carriers.

After eight months of fractious debate and testimony, the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces also rejected the opening of direct ground combat jobs and special commando positions to women, decisions that were more widely expected.

While the commission’s recommendation blocking women from ground combat had been anticipated, its decision to propose the continued bar on women piloting warplanes in combat was a surprise. The vote, concluded in a dramatic 8-7 showdown, will be reflected in a series of recommendations that will be sent to the President soon.

While advisory, the vote represents a serious setback to many women in the services and to lawmakers who have agitated for expanded military job opportunities since the end of the Persian Gulf War.

The commission’s set of recommendations was particularly surprising because in May, 1991, Congress repealed the prohibition against women flying combat jets. However, lawmakers have not mandated changes that would open a broader range of Navy ships to women.

In voting Tuesday, the commission also rejected a proposal to recommend a test program under which female aviators would be permitted to train for and fly combat missions.

Indeed, the commission’s recommendations would reverse a trend toward the liberalization of combat roles for women. The commission’s recommendations, for instance, would ask Congress to pass a law formalizing an existing Army policy that blocks Army women from flying combat helicopters.

Lt. Paula Coughlin, a female Naval aviator who brought the 1991 Tailhook sexual harassment charges into public view, expressed shock and disappointment at the commission’s recommendation, although she said that she was not surprised by the vote.

“What just transpired . . . is probably just as damaging for the morale of women in the military as what I and other women endured in a hallway in Las Vegas last year,” where the alleged sexual harassment took place at the annual convention of the Tailhook Assn., Coughlin said.

President-elect Bill Clinton has said that he would await the recommendations of the commission before taking action to expand opportunities for women in the services.

In considering the commission’s recommendations, Clinton is expected to look for guidance to a small group of influential members of Congress led by Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), who has been cautious in backing expanded roles for women in the military. As a result, the commission’s recommendations, although adopted by narrow margins, are certain to play an important role in decisions over women’s future combat roles.

Still, several disappointed commissioners and observers who had backed the expansion of women’s combat roles insisted that the commission’s word will not end political wrangling over the issue. Since the Persian Gulf War, a large number of lawmakers have agitated for sweeping changes in military personnel policies.

Given that sentiment, the commission’s unwillingness to open combat cockpits to women drew a sharp rebuke from the commission’s chairman, retired Air Force Gen. Robert T. Herres, who has consistently backed the expansion of combat roles for women.

“We should think carefully about the ramifications of a commission that recommends to Congress and the President ‘no change, status quo,’ ” said Herres. In their zeal to open new combat career fields to women, lawmakers may ignore the report altogether and legislate unwise decisions, Herres warned.

“All of (our) cautions will probably be lost in the smoke,” he said.

Included on the commission are conservatives Kate Walsh O’Beirne of the Heritage Foundation and Elaine Donnelly of the Eagle Forum; Newton N. Minow, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; heavily decorated Vietnam veteran and military historian Ronald Ray; two active-duty officers, Army Capt. Mary Finch and Marine Brig. Gen. Thomas V. Draude, who also was heavily decorated for his Vietnam service, and two retired officers, Army Gen. Maxwell Thurman and Adm. James R. Hogg.

Cmdr. Rosemary Mariner, one of the Navy’s most experienced female aviators, said that the commission’s recommendation to keep combat cockpits closed to women probably one day will be rejected by Congress and the Pentagon. In the meantime, she said, the panel’s set of recommendations “is going to hurt our readiness again because it’s going to divide us again.”

“It draws out this process. It makes for greater division” within our ranks, Mariner said.

Thurman, a swing vote on the commission, said that the prospect of future women prisoners-of-war was decisive for him on the question of opening combat aircraft to women. The treatment that captured aviators have endured at the hands of enemy forces has loomed large in the minds of many commission members.

Acknowledging the importance of the issue, Thurman switched his vote and supported the opening of Navy surface ships to women.

Hogg, a proponent of expanded combat opportunities for women, said that the distinction between opening ships and combat aircraft “was an emotional line based on the POW issue. That was the compelling issue for the commission.”

The Navy controversy over sexual harassment in its ranks, sparked by the Tailhook incidents, also has had a major impact on the proceedings. In an interview, commission member Charles Moskos said that Tailhook “has cast a longer shadow” over the proceedings than even the performance of women in the Persian Gulf War--the issue that prompted the movement to revise combat exclusion policies in the first place.

The commission recommended that the Navy be permitted to proceed “without undue haste” to modify its vessels, equipment and facilities to accommodate women. Navy experts said that it would take more than a decade to make such changes.

The commission also voted to continue a law that excludes women from any military draft.

While rejecting further openings in ground combat jobs, the commission asked for a comprehensive review of the Army jobs that are closed to women. The commission voted to recommend that secretaries of the Army and Navy (which oversees Marine Corps policy) should review policies excluding women from combat positions and ask for legislation that would enshrine those exclusions in law.