Marine study finds all-male infantry units outperformed teams with women

Jim Michaels | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A Marine Corps study that found all-male ground combat units more effective than teams that included women has raised new concerns about the Pentagon's push to open all jobs to women next year.

A summary of results released Thursday from the unprecedented study showed that all-male ground combat squads were faster, stronger and more lethal in most cases than units that included women.The women also suffered higher injury rates during physically demanding training.

The Marine Corps and other services face a deadline the Pentagon has set for requiring military branches to open all specialties to women, including infantry and special operations forces, beginning next year.

The services have until the end of this month to request an exception to the order for some occupations.

The Marine Corps has not yet said whether it will request a waiver, but the study's results are likely to fuel a growing debate over including women in ground combat jobs.

"If you were to turn down a request for a waiver like that I guess the political machine in the White House would be saying we don’t care about the effectiveness of the ground combat units," said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a member of the Armed Services Committee who served in the Marine Corps and ha expressed concerns about opening up all positions to women.

Administration officials have said their intent is to open all jobs to women and have set the bar high for waivers. "The department's policy is that all ground combat positions will be open to women, unless rigorous analysis of factual data shows that the positions must remain closed," Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said last month.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who oversees the Marine Corps, said the study would not change his mind about opening all career fields to women.

The Army also has not said if it will seek waivers. The Navy and Air Force, which have fewer jobs that now bar women, have not announced their plans.

The Marine study is the first effort to measure what impact gender integration could have on combat effectiveness. "This is unprecedented research across the services," Marine Col. Anne Weinberg said.

In another change toward gender equality, the Army recently opened its Ranger school to both sexes. Last month, two women became the first of their gender to complete Ranger school, an arduous two-month course where students hike long distances with heavy packs and operate with little sleep or food.

The services have also launched efforts to determine the physical requirements for all military jobs and create tests to screen servicemembers for specific fields.

The Marine Corps went a step further, creating a task force that allowed commanders to compare all-male with gender-integrated units. That allowed the service to compare not just individual performance, but also how a team with women performs as a unit. The task force consisted of about 300 men and 100 women who trained together for nearly a year.

The all-male units outperformed gender-integrated units on 69% of the 134 tasks that were evaluated, according to the summary. The integrated teams performed better in two machine-gun related tasks than the all-male teams. There was no difference on the remaining tasks.

Despite advances in technology, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been largely traditional infantry fights with foot soldiers battling each other on deserts and mountains.

Marine infantry units are required to walk long distances carrying equipment weighing more than 100 pounds and be prepared to fight once they arrive at their destination.

The study concluded that all-male squads moved faster than integrated units, particularly when carrying heavy weapons, such as machine guns and mortars.

"Anytime we did movement under load, all-male groups outperformed integrated groups," said Paul Johnson, a Marine civilian official who helped develop and oversee the experiment.

On marksmanship, men who had not been through infantry school hit targets 44% of the time with M4 rifles, besting infantry-trained women, who hit targets 28% of the time.

Women also struggled with obstacles designed to test upper body strength in simulated combat. "For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top," the summary said.

The average male Marine in the study weighed 178 lbs. and had 20% body fat. The average woman weighed 142 lbs. and had 24% body fat.

The rate of injuries to muscles, tendons and ligaments was 40.5% for women, compared to 18.8% for men.

Women make up about 7% of the Marine Corps, the most male-dominated service. The Marine Corps is organized around the infantry, which is designed to be an expeditionary force capable of spending months in the field, often living in primitive conditions. It is physically demanding work.

The Marine Corps opened its infantry officer course to women, but none of 29 female volunteers completed it, though women have completed the infantry course for enlisted personnel.

Officials cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from the study. Better training and screening could boost female performance, for example. "We can get better on injuries," Weinberg said. "We can get better on strength. We can get better on training."

Sherry de Vries, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, said that once women have had more experience in the infantry their performance will rise. "The women don’t have the training that men had to begin with," she said.

Despite the ban on infantry jobs, women have been exposed to combat after 14 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 280,000 women have deployed, according to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has steadily increased the number of jobs and occupations open to women. During the past two years, 111,000 women can hold positions that previously were closed to them.

About 220,000 positions remain closed to women out of about 2 million positions in the active duty, guard and reserves.