Aspin Orders Wider Military Role for Women

Defense Secretary Les Aspin, taking what he called “historic steps” to integrate women more fully into the armed forces, Wednesday directed the military services to open ships and combat aircraft jobs to women and to explore new openings in a range of ground combat jobs from field artillery to combat-level military intelligence.

Across the nation, military women cheered the decision and lined up to take their places on the front lines of the nation’s defense forces. At the Pentagon, where there has been scattered resistance to such moves, military officials scrambled to lay out the welcome mat for women pilots and lay the groundwork for more sweeping changes later.

Navy officials said women pilots could be flying combat missions from aircraft carriers by late summer. The Army’s top general said women will begin training for helicopter attack missions by June. The Air Force named seven women “aviation pioneers,” who will lead the way into combat aircraft training starting next February. And the Marine Corps’ commandant told reporters that female Marines likely will begin submitting applications to start training in combat aircraft “starting the day after tomorrow.”

Women throughout the services hailed Aspin’s decision as one that will break down career barriers facing female service members and allow the armed forces to reap the rewards of their investment in the training of women.

“It just kind of opens up the doors,” said 27-year-old Army Lt. Jennifer Manzo, a scout helicopter pilot who once commanded a platoon that she could not lead into battle because of Army rules. “You always felt restricted no matter how well you did. Now it’s open; it’s totally up to you. You can go as high as you want to go now. This change lets you, as the Army says, ‘be all you can be.’ ”

Lt. Lori Tanner, a naval aviator and instructor of test pilots, said that “the sky’s the limit now” for women aspiring to be the service’s top guns. “It’s been a long time coming,” she said.

Aspin cast his decision as one that will improve the quality of the armed forces as they continue to shrink in the wake of the Cold War’s end.

“The services will be able to call on a much larger pool of talent to perform the vital tasks that our military forces must perform in the post-Cold War world,” Aspin told a press conference. “To do that job well, we need to recruit the best talent we can find and assign the best-qualified individual for each military job. Right now, we are not able to do that. Many important military jobs are closed to women and, as long as that is the case, we cannot be sure that we are putting the very best person in the job.”

Aspin said that “part of the message” he delivered Wednesday was that an era in which sexual assaults, such as those at a 1991 Navy Tailhook Assn. convention, occurred is over.

Congress must act before Aspin’s order on combat ship positions can be carried out. In what appeared to be a prod to lawmakers, Aspin pointed to the performance of U.S. military women in training, as well as in the Persian Gulf War, where they fought, died and were taken captive.

“We know from Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield that women stand up to the most demanding environments,” Aspin said. “So we are acting on what we know.”

That sentiment was echoed by many female military pilots. Female Navy and Army pilots have been flying and training in combat planes for years, though they have not been permitted to fly combat missions. The Air Force and Marine Corps have women on the air crews of a variety of noncombat aircraft but have drawn the line at allowing women to train to fly warplanes.

“It’s a big step but it’s not like we don’t know whether it’s going to work,” said Lt. Lisa Nowak, a 29-year-old aviator training to become a test pilot at the Navy’s Patuxent River, Md., test facility.

“Women are ready for it--absolutely,” said Lt. Cmdr. Trish Beckman, a 40-year-old instructor at the Patuxent River school who bemoaned only that she is too old to make the transition to a combat squadron. “We want to be 100% part of the team. And for so long, we’ve been told we couldn’t be part of the team.”

That was the message that Air Force Lt. Jeannie Flynn got last December, when she graduated first in her 33-person pilot training class at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. An aerospace engineer trained at Stanford University, Flynn told the Air Force that she wanted to fly its newest fighter jet, the F-15E Eagle.

“The rules at the time precluded such a choice,” said Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, Air Force chief of staff. “But we kept an eye on her.”

Last week, as Aspin closed in on the decision announced Wednesday, Air Force officials contacted the 26-year-old Flynn, who is now instructing young pilots at Randolph Air Force Base, and asked if she was still interested in the F-15.

Flynn, who had figured that any change in policy would come too late for her, demonstrated a fighter jock’s decisiveness. “Well, I said something to the effect of ‘hell, yes!’ ” said Flynn, who will enter F-15 flight training next February.

For the Air Force, the roughly 10,000 positions on combat air crews have been the final barrier to the total integration of women in the service. Even after extending new opportunities to women, the Army and Marine Corps are expected to continue to bar women from significant numbers of combat jobs. Under Aspin’s plan, the Navy faces major decisions on where it would draw the line on women and whether it will propose to continue barring women from service aboard submarines and amphibious ships.

McPeak, who said recently that he has a hang-up about “old men ordering young women into combat,” told reporters Wednesday that he is now “comfortable” sending Flynn and her female colleagues into battle. He said that, although he had frankly admitted his qualms to Aspin, “discussion period’s over. We’re in a mode now where we’re carrying this out the best possible way and we’ll do it.”