Aspin Clears Combat Policy for Women

After earlier rejecting a proposal that he found too restrictive, Defense Secretary Les Aspin has approved a new general policy that will allow women to serve in some ground units during combat, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

Kathleen M. deLaski, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the policy will be announced later this week, just before Aspin is scheduled to resign.

Throughout his yearlong tenure, Aspin has pushed hard for opening up more combat opportunities for female soldiers and last April announced that women would be permitted to serve in combat aviation jobs and on warships.

Last month, Aspin asked that a new policy for ground combat forces be reviewed further. He expressed concern that the new guidelines did not definitely describe which kinds of fighting units would be opened to women.

DeLaski said Tuesday that Aspin now is comfortable that the new policy will be as open-ended as possible for women by more clearly defining the term “direct combat.”

She cautioned that women will not be permitted to serve in all areas of combat, such as hand-to-hand fighting.

“Women are still going to be excluded from direct ground combat,” she said. “So what you need is a definition of what is direct ground combat.”

Once the policy is announced, it will go to the various services for their review, and officials will probably take several months to determine which specific combat opportunities will be posted for soldiers of both sexes.

DeLaski said she doubts that the services will have final reviews of the policy ready before Aspin leaves office.

DeLaski said that, once the new policy is in effect, women still would probably not join combat divisions until after 1994, when they would have had enough time to train for work in the new units.

About 199,000 women are in the 1.7-million-member U.S. military.