Military Standards and Gender Integration in the U.S. Armed Forces

The military has become more specific about the standards it expects personnel to meet.

Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot and a combat veteran, is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. Michael O'Hanlon is the Philip H. Knight chair in defense and strategy at the Brookings Institution and author of "Military History for the Modern Strategist: America's Major Wars Since 1861."

In recent years, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been part of a movement questioning the full integration of women into the U.S. armed forces. This school of thought argues that women's presence in the military has led to a lowering of standards of physical fitness and strength that largely explains the nation's struggles on the battlefield in modern times.

Is Hegseth right? And, if so, should something be done about it? Our answer to both questions is no.

Leave aside the fact that most young American men today do not meet military fitness requirements -- and that, without women, who now make up 18 percent of the active-duty military, the services' recent recruiting challenges would be much worse. The fact, as a recent Brookings Institution event with several retired military officers underscored, is that military standards have not been lowered. Nor have easier standards been adopted for women. In military specialties where relatively fewer meet the necessary physical standards, such as the infantry, there are smaller concentrations of women -- as we might expect.

What has happened over the past two to three decades is that the military has become less arbitrary and more specific about the standards it requires military personnel to meet -- largely because of the integration of women. For example, movie-watchers who remember the fabled sand obstacle course in 1982's "An Officer and a Gentleman" may be interested to learn that particular challenge for future naval aviators has been changed -- because it was recognized to be of limited relevance to their core duties.

Yet other standards remain plenty tough. Amy entered the military in the late 1990s as a fighter backseater and later a fighter pilot -- and, while not required to complete that obstacle course, had to fulfill many other exacting physical demands. For example, given the distinct possibility that a Marine aviator might have to eject over water, aspiring pilots today are expected to be able to swim hundreds of yards to shore wearing a flight suit, and while helping ferry a potentially wounded comrade to safety as well.

When pilots learn to fly, the simulators they use do not know whether they are male or female, White or Black, or anything else about them. Standards designed not just to evaluate overall physical fitness but to gauge ability to perform a specific job must remain gender-neutral -- and they have. An aircraft carrier bobbing up and down on rough seas in a nighttime storm makes no allowance for the gender, race, religion, age or any other characteristic of those trying to set their planes down on the deck.

The same holds true for Air Force pilots and Army aviators. Since the 1970s, women in the Air Force, for instance, have been allowed to fly certain planes, beginning with wide-body aircraft. In the 1990s, they were permitted to fly fighters as well -- if they could meet the same standards as men. Throughout this period, overall accident rates in the Air Force declined, and aircraft performance across the force was excellent, with very modest losses, in all the nation's wars from the 1990s to the present. While there has at times been cultural resistance to women taking on such roles, our experience suggests that, in the end, most men want the most skilled teammates -- those who will have their back and help them emerge victorious from a fight. When women meet that standard, as they generally do, they are warmly welcomed and appreciated.

Take another example, from the Marine Corps. Years ago, recruits training at Parris Island, South Carolina, were given specific numbers of push-ups to complete or a certain amount of time to run three miles. Sometimes -- say, back in the Clinton era of the 1990s and the Bush era of the early 2000s -- there were indeed different standards for the two sexes. But the Marines ultimately realized that fitness standards should be suited to the task. Can a given recruit, male or female, load a certain number of mortar rounds on a seven-ton truck in a certain number of minutes? Can they help carry a wounded fellow Marine to safety? Can they carry a heavy rucksack on a long walk in bad weather at night and then prepare an ambush? It is against such gender-neutral standards that Marine recruits are now evaluated.

That said, President Donald Trump has asked a reasonable question: Why has the nation struggled so much in its modern wars? In fact, the United States struggled in Korea and Vietnam, too. We would submit that the main reason for the battlefield setbacks and military defeats of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been the difficult nature of counterinsurgency missions -- as well as the shifting strategies civilian leaders have asked the armed forces to employ in these conflicts. But when one examines the tactical and technical proficiency of the modern, gender-integrated military -- in the Kosovo War (only two American fatalities, and a successful outcome); the rapid overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003; the decimation of al-Qaeda leadership throughout the Middle East and South Asia by U.S. military forces as well as the CIA; the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq from 2014 through 2019; the continued successful deterrence of any Chinese attack on Taiwan -- the results look quite good indeed.

Going forward, standards will need to be periodically reevaluated -- and maintained, to keep our forces at high levels of preparedness. But we also need to continue making the U.S. military, traditionally a culturally conservative organization, more welcoming to talented individuals of all genders, races and other characteristics provided they have the intellect, fitness, values and commitment to contribute to the nation's defense.

Given the realities of modern war and the global security environment, we need them.