Rocky C
03-12-16, 09:29 AM
With the path to the elite SEAL teams opening to women, female special operator hopefuls could be entering the military's most arduous training by late summer.
The likeliest timeline for women would be to enter Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School on Sept. 19 and then the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course in Coronado, Calif. early next year .
The head of the Navy SEALs said the training will be opened to women, but cautioned that this process will yield few qualified women and could prove a distraction for his force's core competency — combat effectiveness.
"In the near term, achieving integration, and evolving existing cultures will channel focus and energy away from core combat readiness and effectiveness efforts," said Rear Adm. Brian Losey, the head of Naval Special Warfare Command, in his letter summarizing the SEAL's 48-page integration plan.
The plan to integrate SEALs has been controversial, with some special operations veterans saying it was a distraction and worrying that the drive to include women would come with lowering their legendary standards.
In his letter released Thursday, Losey warned against lowering those standards.
"Any deviation from the validated, operationally relevant, gender-neutral standards would undermine true integration, disrupt unit cohesion, impact combat effectiveness, and be a disservice to those exceptional candidates willing to test and serve against the required and validated standards," he said.
The plan lays out several timeline scenarios, some of which are more feasible than others. For women to enter BUD/S by late October, they would have had to have been screened before the SEALs' integration plan was released, for example. Meeting those deadlines would be needed for women to report to Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School at Great Lakes, Illinois, in May, the earliest possible date.
An NSW spokesman was unable to say Friday whether any women have screened for SEAL training.
The next enlisted panel meets in June, which would put approved women at prep school in mid-September, then at NSW orientation in early December, an eight-week process before starting BUD/S.
Per the officer timeline, if a woman was prepared to apply first thing this year, she could be at BUD/S in early 2017. However, not all commissioning pipelines would have been prepared for that.
For example, Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Ted Carter, who supplies 35 percent of special warfare officers, announced in December that he would allow women into his NSW pipeline with the class of 2017.
And once women get through BUD/S, notorious for dropping 80 percent of men, it could be up to a year before they are assigned to SEAL or SWCC units.
It's much more likely, according to their notes, that a woman who gets to boot camp in July and screens for NSW could be at prep school on Sept. 19, and NSW orientation on Dec. 1, putting the first women at BUD/S in late January 2017.
Combating concerns
Welcoming women to NSW's SEAL and special warfare combat crewmen specialties will take some logistical work, which is outlined in the plan, but they must hew to their standards, Losey wrote.
"Focusing on gender-neutrality of standards is the number one effective measure to continue successful gender integration in the force," he added.
With already low selection numbers for men, it's unlikely that special operations will see an influx of women.
In similar communities, female participation is low: divers are 0.6 percent women, while explosive ordnance disposal is 0.9 percent female enlisted and 2.5 percent female officers.
Only 13 percent of female enlisted EOD applicants make it through, and 18 percent of female diving hopefuls. That's compared to men, who get through at 31 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
"Equal opportunity may not produce equal results," Losey wrote. "While there are no insurmountable obstacles to opening all NSW positions to females, there are foreseeable impacts in achieving true integration in NSW ground combat units."
There is also considerable worry in the force that integration will become a sideshow.
Media attention is an issue, according to the plan. Unlike coverage of the Navy's integration of the riverines, women completing Marine Corps enlisted infantry training and the first women to graduate Army Ranger School, NSW is committing to keeping secret the identities of all of their trainees.
Brass tacks
Adding women to NSW is more complicated than opening the training pipeline — it will also require manning tweaks and infrastructure upgrades.
In the short-term, they're asking to multiply the number of female staff by five at the Naval Special Warfare Center. For the long-term, they want to have eight more female billets in the training phase staff.
Currently, there are 10 women assigned to NSWCEN, including an athletic trainer, physical therapist, psychologist, physician's assistant, EOD officer, senior chief hospital corpsman, an HM1 diving medical technician, a 1st class master-at-arms, a 2nd glass gunner's mate and a 2nd class boatswain's mate.
It will also cost $275,000 to physically accommodate women. They'll need $175,000 of that to install security cameras at the BUD/S barracks and another $100,000 for women's heads and showers at their San Clemente Island facilities.
The open-bay barracks will be use privacy partitions and have segregated heads, based on the Army's Ranger School. During training, there will be all-female floors and wings.
All of these changes are contingent on those gender-neutral physical standards. SEALs and SWCCs have a grueling fitness test and candidates compete against each other for a spot, graded on a curve.
Often, the average candidate swims and runs minutes faster and can do one-and-a-half times as many push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups as the the minimum requirement.
The likeliest timeline for women would be to enter Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School on Sept. 19 and then the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course in Coronado, Calif. early next year .
The head of the Navy SEALs said the training will be opened to women, but cautioned that this process will yield few qualified women and could prove a distraction for his force's core competency — combat effectiveness.
"In the near term, achieving integration, and evolving existing cultures will channel focus and energy away from core combat readiness and effectiveness efforts," said Rear Adm. Brian Losey, the head of Naval Special Warfare Command, in his letter summarizing the SEAL's 48-page integration plan.
The plan to integrate SEALs has been controversial, with some special operations veterans saying it was a distraction and worrying that the drive to include women would come with lowering their legendary standards.
In his letter released Thursday, Losey warned against lowering those standards.
"Any deviation from the validated, operationally relevant, gender-neutral standards would undermine true integration, disrupt unit cohesion, impact combat effectiveness, and be a disservice to those exceptional candidates willing to test and serve against the required and validated standards," he said.
The plan lays out several timeline scenarios, some of which are more feasible than others. For women to enter BUD/S by late October, they would have had to have been screened before the SEALs' integration plan was released, for example. Meeting those deadlines would be needed for women to report to Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School at Great Lakes, Illinois, in May, the earliest possible date.
An NSW spokesman was unable to say Friday whether any women have screened for SEAL training.
The next enlisted panel meets in June, which would put approved women at prep school in mid-September, then at NSW orientation in early December, an eight-week process before starting BUD/S.
Per the officer timeline, if a woman was prepared to apply first thing this year, she could be at BUD/S in early 2017. However, not all commissioning pipelines would have been prepared for that.
For example, Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Ted Carter, who supplies 35 percent of special warfare officers, announced in December that he would allow women into his NSW pipeline with the class of 2017.
And once women get through BUD/S, notorious for dropping 80 percent of men, it could be up to a year before they are assigned to SEAL or SWCC units.
It's much more likely, according to their notes, that a woman who gets to boot camp in July and screens for NSW could be at prep school on Sept. 19, and NSW orientation on Dec. 1, putting the first women at BUD/S in late January 2017.
Combating concerns
Welcoming women to NSW's SEAL and special warfare combat crewmen specialties will take some logistical work, which is outlined in the plan, but they must hew to their standards, Losey wrote.
"Focusing on gender-neutrality of standards is the number one effective measure to continue successful gender integration in the force," he added.
With already low selection numbers for men, it's unlikely that special operations will see an influx of women.
In similar communities, female participation is low: divers are 0.6 percent women, while explosive ordnance disposal is 0.9 percent female enlisted and 2.5 percent female officers.
Only 13 percent of female enlisted EOD applicants make it through, and 18 percent of female diving hopefuls. That's compared to men, who get through at 31 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
"Equal opportunity may not produce equal results," Losey wrote. "While there are no insurmountable obstacles to opening all NSW positions to females, there are foreseeable impacts in achieving true integration in NSW ground combat units."
There is also considerable worry in the force that integration will become a sideshow.
Media attention is an issue, according to the plan. Unlike coverage of the Navy's integration of the riverines, women completing Marine Corps enlisted infantry training and the first women to graduate Army Ranger School, NSW is committing to keeping secret the identities of all of their trainees.
Brass tacks
Adding women to NSW is more complicated than opening the training pipeline — it will also require manning tweaks and infrastructure upgrades.
In the short-term, they're asking to multiply the number of female staff by five at the Naval Special Warfare Center. For the long-term, they want to have eight more female billets in the training phase staff.
Currently, there are 10 women assigned to NSWCEN, including an athletic trainer, physical therapist, psychologist, physician's assistant, EOD officer, senior chief hospital corpsman, an HM1 diving medical technician, a 1st class master-at-arms, a 2nd glass gunner's mate and a 2nd class boatswain's mate.
It will also cost $275,000 to physically accommodate women. They'll need $175,000 of that to install security cameras at the BUD/S barracks and another $100,000 for women's heads and showers at their San Clemente Island facilities.
The open-bay barracks will be use privacy partitions and have segregated heads, based on the Army's Ranger School. During training, there will be all-female floors and wings.
All of these changes are contingent on those gender-neutral physical standards. SEALs and SWCCs have a grueling fitness test and candidates compete against each other for a spot, graded on a curve.
Often, the average candidate swims and runs minutes faster and can do one-and-a-half times as many push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups as the the minimum requirement.