Women’s groundbreaking flight sparks debate
By Markeshia Ricks - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Apr 16, 2011 8:14:53 EDT
When eight female airmen at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan were tapped for a mission last month, they had no idea they would be stirring the debate about women in combat.
On March 30, the day before Women’s History Month ended, the members of the 389th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron and 455th Air Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron became the first women on record to execute an all-female combat sortie from start to finish.
It took clever scheduling to pull off the mission for Women’s History Month, but it couldn’t have happened if the Air Force didn’t have women serving in virtually all of its hundreds of career fields. The only jobs still off limits to female airmen are combat air controller, air liaison officer, tactical command and control, pararescue and radio frequency transmission systems.
The Air Force is quick to point out it doesn’t ban women from combat but put the restrictions in place to comply with Defense Department policy.
“The Air Force does not restrict women from specific assignments,” spokesman Todd Spitler wrote in an email.
Soon, though, every Air Force Specialty Code could be open to female airmen if the Pentagon acts on a recommendation from a commission charged with reviewing diversity issues in the military.
In March, the Military Leadership Diversity Commission called on DoD to immediately allow women to be assigned to combat units since many female soldiers and Marines are essentially fighting in Afghanistan already and to open additional direct ground combat career fields and units to women in all services.
The recommendation has Defense Secretary Robert Gates giving careful consideration to softening — if not eliminating — combat exclusion rules.
“I’m confident this is an area [that is] going to change,” Gates told troops during an April 7 visit to Camp Liberty in Baghdad. “Time scale of the change? I have no idea.”
Members of the first all-woman combat mission and many of their fellow airmen say the change would be OK with them.
Flying into history
They did not set out to make history. They only sought to celebrate women.
The all-female combat sortie came about because of a man’s observation and a woman’s scheduling.
As executive officer of the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, Maj. Christine Mau plans missions. Then, she takes her turn flying them in her F-15E Strike Eagle.
One day last month, Mau and her wing commander, Brig. Gen. Jack Briggs, were looking at pictures of the 389th’s members when he pointed out how many women were in the aircrew.
“Six females in an aircrew are very rare,” said Mau during a telephone call from Bagram. “It’s crazy, really. Once he saw that it was Women’s History Month he thought it would be a good idea to celebrate with a flight of all women — as long as we didn’t have to flail around or bend over backward to make it happen.”
It didn’t take much for Mau to pull off the all-female mission. The schedules simply had to be synchronized.
Staff Sgt. Miranda Wilson, a maintainer and crew chief, had no idea when she walked into work that she’d be part of an all-female mission.
“Our squadron has a decent amount of females … but it was odd for all of us to be on a shift together,” said Wilson, a member of the 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. “I’ve definitely worked with all of those girls plenty of times launching out male pilots … but to be paired up together specifically is not something we normally get the opportunity to do.”
It wasn’t until after the mission was over that the women learned they had made history. All-female flights have been organized in honor of Women’s History Month before, but none had ever had a female ground crew.
“The whole historic part of it is not something that any of us realized,” Wilson said. “The historic piece came after the fact, when the wing historian told us. We just thought it was a good way to celebrate Women’s History Month.”
For Mau, participating in such a historic event with her sister airmen was encouraging in a way hard to describe.
“Friendships are different among women and it’s nice to have friends in the squadron who are women,” she said. “We love our country and we all felt a calling to serve. We love what we do for the Air Force. What we do here is very mission focused.
“What we do every day is go out and support ground forces,” Mau said. “We’re professionals about it and I’m very proud of that fact. Doing your job to best of your ability helps save lives and that’s huge for me.”
Opportunities for all
Female pilots officially started flying fighters in 1993, evidence of what the Air Force calls its commitment to “enhancing diversity.”
“The fact that women have been assigned to all the roles necessary to make up this ‘all-woman’ mission since 1993 demonstrates the Air Force’s commitment to equal opportunity,” Spitler, the spokesman, wrote in his email.
Spitler pointed out that the Air Force has more than 950 female pilots and they fly virtually every type of aircraft, from fighters and bombers to transports and tankers to remotely piloted aircraft.
“Diversity contributes to an inclusive organizational culture that values differences and allows all airmen to contribute their full potential,” Spitler wrote. “To remain the world’s premier Air Force, we must attract, recruit, develop, mentor and retain the best possible talent. The ability to retain a highly talented, diverse pool of airmen for service in the Air Force will positively impact our future total force.”
Senior Airman Guenevere Lowe is an aviation resource manager with the 389th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron who made the roster for the all-female combat mission.
In her nearly five years in the Air Force, Lowe has never been told that she can’t do something because she’s a woman.
“Every opportunity is given to each Air Force member equally,” she said.
Mau was the only woman in her flight training class. She believes the Air Force has changed since her early days in the service. A lot of the prejudices against women have fallen away, she said.
“An airplane doesn’t care who is flying it — it’s the ultimate equalizer,” she said.
Mau described the Air Force as “performance based” and the “closest thing to a meritocracy you can get.”
“I wouldn’t say I have it harder at all” than men, she said. “Sure, when I first started, some guys weren’t especially keen on women fighter pilots, but they couldn’t do anything about it. That was 11 years ago. That’s gone now and I don’t see any of that stuff anymore.”
Today, Mau is firm that her success lies in her own hands. The Air Force, she said, has not put any limits on her opportunities.
“It’s all about how you perform,” she said. “If I don’t get there it’s because I’ve done something that’s not good enough.”
Qualified women only
Senior Master Sgt. Roberta Warren has no doubt: Women should serve in combat roles.
“If they qualify to join the military and perform the job the same as their male counterparts, then there should be no distinction of what role they should serve in,” Warren wrote in an email in response to Air Force Times’ request for comments.
A woman is no more or less valuable than a man, Warren said.
“A life is a life and there should be no more importance placed on a woman killed in combat than a man,” she wrote. “The pain of grief is the same.”
It’s time to let go of “all those ancient beliefs” about the roles men and women should play, she said.
“We have gotten rid of whites only, recently [allowed the] openly gay, and now is the time for ’no-women in combat’ to be eradicated.”
Retired Senior Master Sgt. Jerry Fox too thinks women should be allowed into combat roles “if they are able to handle the physical and mental requirements of the job.”
“Can you hump a 60 [pound rucksack] with food, water, ammo, M4 and comm gear at 10,000 feet in the mountains of Afghanistan, be mentally sharp enough to call in PGM ‘danger close’ with no sleep and be part of a team?” Fox asked. “It’s not about how smart or how motivated. It’s about accomplishing the mission.”
A special tactics officer who has served two deployments in Afghanistan insists he has no problem with women in the battlefield airmen career fields as long as the training, qualifications and standards remain the same for everyone.
“As long as none of the standards would be different for the female applicant or the female in the field than it would be for the male, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak freely. “For instance, everyone in combat control or pararescue, they’re all trained exactly the same, they’re all expected to do exactly the same missions and when directed, execute the missions, we can go work with anyone. I can go work with the Army. I can go work with the Navy. I can go work with the Marines. But if the standards change, that doesn’t exist anymore.”
The officer, though, wondered how a woman might fit into a male-dominated unit, especially the small, tightly knit units that are common in special operations.
“There are a lot of times where people aren’t mature enough to deal with having the opposite sex in their environment,” he said. “But this is the bottom line: If we’re ordered to do it, we’ll salute smartly and execute.”
Lt. Col. Craig Keyes said he wants those in charge of changing the policy to consider more than women’s desire and qualifications to serve in combat.
The American public, he said, has to prepare itself mentally for stories about women being sexually assaulted and killed in combat.
“I’ve attended a Fallen Comrade ceremony for a female Army soldier in Afghanistan and it was terribly heartbreaking,” he said. “I think women should make the decision if DoD changes the policy on women in combat. If the policy is not changed, DoD needs to assess how women can fairly compete for promotion without combat experience.”
A reality check
Lory Manning is a retired Navy captain who wants the Pentagon to come clean: Women already are on the battlefield; they just can’t be assigned to combat units because of the ban.
The wink-wink, nod-nod serves no one — male or female, said Manning, director of the Women in Military project, a, lobbying organization for female troops and veterans.
“It puts the local ground commanders in a very strange position,” she said.
And the women are fighting “unofficially” without the training they need — and deserve. The lack of training is not only dangerous on the battlefield but could have serious consequences down the line, Manning said. A female veteran could have trouble getting help for medical and mental conditions if her combat experience wasn’t documented.
The charade is enough to merit repeal of the combat exclusion rules, Manning said.
Manning credits the Air Force for allowing women to fight from the air but takes the service to task for not pushing to open up the handful of fields that remain restricted.
“I haven’t seen any Air Force response to that,” she said. “Not like what we’ve seen from the Navy and the Marines.”
Spitler, the Air Force spokesman, answered Manning’s criticism by pointing again to the DoD policy.
“If DoD and sister services notify Congress and elect to change their policies at some future date, the Air Force will adjust accordingly,” he said.
Tech. Sgt. Vilma Velez, a combat cameraman with the 3rd Combat Camera Squadron at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, spent much of her most recent deployment with an Army infantry unit in Iraq.
Velez had already completed one deployment when she deployed to Iraq in 2007 during the height of the troop surge there. She was assigned to B Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division.
Any woman who wants to and is able should be able to serve in combat, Velez said.
“As long as you’re physically fit and you’re not going to hinder them and slow them down, then more power to you,” she said.
But the infantryman’s life is tough, Velez said.
“We’d hop over rooftops in all our battle rattle, and even at the peak of my fitness, I’d say, ‘This sucks,‘“ Velez said. “Several times I’d find myself in situations where I was, ‘Wow, how did I end up here?’ But as long as a woman can do the job and not get anyone hurt, they should be [allowed] to do it.”
Velez enjoyed her time with the infantry company.
“For me, it was just so awesome because the soldiers don’t really see a woman or a man, they just see a soldier and they took me in,” she said. “The only time they really referenced my gender was making sure the other [soldiers] weren’t messing with me.”
However, she did notice slight changes in the interaction and unit dynamics when she spent time with units other than B Company.
“Most of my tour was with Bravo Company but I would still go out to other [locations] and I would have to go be embedded with a totally different company,” she said. “Bravo Company, they knew me, they didn’t care. We were all grown-ups. But I noticed when I went to embed with another company that did not know me they watched their language and changed the way they talked until they got used to having a woman around.”
Staff writer Michelle Tan contributed to this report.
