Women still facing some combat bans

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon will maintain bans on women serving in most ground combat units, defense officials said Thursday, despite pressure from lawmakers and female veterans who called the restrictions outdated after a decade at war.

After taking more than a year to review its policies on orders from Congress, the Defense Department announced that it would open about 14,000 combat-related positions to female troops, including tank mechanics and intelligence officers on the front lines.

But the Pentagon said it would keep 238,000 other positions -- about one-fifth of the active-duty military -- off-limits to women, pending further reviews. Virtually all of those jobs are in the Army and Marine Corps.

Pentagon officials said that they were committed to lifting barriers to women, but that it was difficult to make sweeping changes on the battlefield during a time of war.

"Sometimes this takes longer than you'd like," said Virginia Penrod, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for military personnel policy. " It may appear too slow to some, but I see this as a great step forward."

In the 1970s, Penrod was one of the first women allowed to serve at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. Female troops had been banned there because it was " too cold," she said.

Advocates for women in the military, however, accused the Pentagon of dragging its feet and only belatedly recognizing the critical role that female troops have played in Afghanistan and Iraq. They said many of the job openings announced by the Pentagon merely codify the reality on the battlefield, where commanders have stretched rules for years to allow women to bear arms and support ground combat units. Since 2001, about 280,000 women have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department statistics; 144 have been killed and 865 wounded.

ARMY: Among the jobs that will be opened to women for the first time are tank and armored troop carrier mechanic, artillery radar operator and rocket launcher crewmember.

NAVY: Minimal change. Eighty-eight percent of positions already are open to women. Existing restrictions are based mostly on the high cost of modifying submarines to provide privacy for women.

MARINES: No new jobs, such as tank driver, will be opened to women. But women will be allowed to perform already open jobs, such as supply officer, in units such as artillery battalions and tank battalions that had been closed.

AIR FORCE: Ninety-nine percent of positions are open to women. The few remaining restrictions are in special operations and ground combat units.