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The U.S. Army’s plan to conduct an integrated Ranger School assessment in 2015 is looking good — interest is so high that the number of female volunteers must be cut to 160 candidates. All women selected by their commands and units will take part in the two-week Army National Guard Ranger Training and Assessment Course. Those who successfully complete the pre-Ranger course at Fort Benning, Georgia, will then move on to Ranger School, which is held 11 times a year.

Interesting that Google the front page shows all the military men in the background and the woman out front on the Veteran's Day page.

The U.S. Army is opening the door for women to go to Ranger school. It's one of the first steps in the broader effort to allow women to begin moving into more grueling combat jobs.

A female soldier who sparked an "active shooter" alert on a Virginia military base on Monday died after shooting herself in the head, military sources said. ... The soldier, who has not yet been publicly identified, reportedly did not harm anybody else during her morning rampage in an office in a four-story building on the base, which is located about 45 km (28 miles) south or Richmond, Virginia. ... Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lyons, the commanding general of the support command, said that the soldier was a sergeant 1st class who had been in the Army for 14 years and...

The White House has picked the first female general to head the Air Force in the Pacific, which will make her the first non-pilot to command air power in such a large theater of operation. The Pentagon announced this week that Air ForceLt. Gen. Lori J. Robinson has been nominated for promotion to four-star general and as commander of Pacific Air Forces, the Air Force component of U.S. Pacific Command. It is a major combatant command whose air, ground and naval forces have broad responsibility for security in the Asia-Pacific region. Her nomination was sent to the Senate for confirmation....

The ceremony included a bit of comedy, but there was no denying the significance: For the first time in its history, the Navy promoted a woman on Tuesday to become a four-star admiral. Surrounded by friends, family and peers, Adm. Michelle J. Howard was promoted to her new rank at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She’ll take over as the vice chief of naval operations, the No. 2 officer in the service. She is not only the first woman to hold the job, but the first African-American.

New book shows women in combat suffer much more serious non-combat injuries, alleges IDF cover-up. A new book sums up 13 years of research on female participation in IDF combat units and declares the feminist experiment in the Israeli military a failure. “Lochamot Betzahal” by Col. (res.) Raza Sagi, a former infantry regiment commander, points to high rates of serious injury among women serving in combat units, and to involvement of radical political groups behind the scenes of the campaign for combat service by women. ..... "The study found that a particularly high percentage of women who served in combat...

The military is taking steps to prepare women for combat roles in 2016. The Marine Corps announced that it would give young female lieutenants who wash out of the grueling Infantry Officer Course a second shot, same as their male counterparts. The Army is conducting a study to test just how fit a soldier has to be to engage in combat. The study involves 60 women and 100 men. CBS News reported on both developments last week. The Marine Corps announcement came after Marine 2nd Lt. Sage Santangelo took the Infantry Officer Court and wrote about her experience last month...

In his latest White House teleprompter reading on Tuesday, President Barack Obama railed against the alleged problem of pay inequality between male and female workers. He stated assertively at one point, "Equal pay for equal work, it's not that complicated." Obama also signed two more executive orders that are tangental to the issue. So assuming that Obama is a man of his word, it is fair to say that he is about to embark on his own latest 'war on women' and declare that female members of the U.S. Army should be paid less than their male counterparts. How can...

by Gina Cassini | Top Right News Outrageous. Reckless. Senseless. That is what many military families are calling the continuing ban on concealed carry for servicemembers on U.S. military bases. Bases like Ft. Hood, where 3 brave members of our military were gunned down by an apparently mentally-compromised Spc. Ivan Lopez. And the outrage will only grow in light of a new shocking report that Lopez was able to remain free for 15 to 20 minutes -- more than enough time for him to kill 3 and wound 16 -- before finally being confronted by a military policewoman, whereupon he took...

The sailor who was slain during a shootout aboard a guided-missile destroyer at a Virginia base saved another sailor's life by jumping between her and a civilian gunman who was trying to board the ship, Navy officials said Wednesday. (snip) He parked his tractor-trailer cab near Pier 1, was able to walk onto the pier and began heading up a ramp toward the USS Mahan when he was confronted by Navy security, said Mario Palomino, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent in charge of the Norfolk field office. The man then got into an altercation with a female petty...

The Marine Corps will open new combat jobs to women, allow women to volunteer for combat specialty training previously closed to them and create a co-ed experimental task force to evaluate how female Marines perform as part of a ground combat unit, Marine officials said. The task force will be made up of about 460 Marines, and about one quarter will be women, said Capt. Maureen Krebs, a Marine spokeswoman. The task force will look like a small battalion landing team with attachments such as artillery, tanks and amphibious assault vehicles — similar to the ground combat portion of a...

I KNOW that I will probably get some flack for this, but I just can't hold my tongue any longer on this issue of female Marines participating in combat. I've been following this story closely for the past two years, and let's just say that this is where the egalitarian rubber meets the road. If you haven't been following the story, here's the skinny: More than half of female Marines can't do three pull-ups, and that's the minimum standard that the Marine Corps designated to integrate women into combat jobs. According to the military, eight pull-ups is a perfect score...

More than half of female Marines in boot camp can't do three pullups, the minimum standard that was supposed to take effect with the new year, prompting the Marine Corps to delay the requirement, part of the process of equalizing physical standards to integrate women into combat jobs. The delay rekindled sharp debate in the military on the question of whether women have the physical strength for some military jobs, as service branches move toward opening thousands of combat roles to them in 2016. Although no new timetable has been set on the delayed physical requirement, Marine Corps Commandant Gen....

The Marine Corps has delayed the requirement for female Marines to do three pullups because most women have so far been unable to pass the test. For 40 years, male recruits were required to perform three pullups to prove their upper body strength for combat, where they would need to carry heavy equipment and potentially lift themselves out of mud walls. Starting Jan. 1, female recruits would have been required to do the same. But 55 percent of female recruits could not complete all three pullups, compared to just 1 percent of male recruits who could not, so the requirement...

(CNSNews.com) -- Females in the Marine Corps currently are not required to do even a single pull-up, and a deadline mandating that by Jan. 1, 2014, they be able to do at least 3 pull-ups as part of their training has been delayed for at least a year, the Corps quietly announced on social media. Unlike their female counterparts, male Marines have long been required to do at least 3 pullups as part of the Physical Fitness Test (PFT). That's the minimum requirement for males. - See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-boland/female-marines-not-required-do-1-pull#sthash.d11sA26X.dpuf

Rachel Washburn, age 25, hasn't had a typical career path, to put it mildly. She joined the Eagles' cheerleading squad from 2007 to 2009 while a student at Drexel University. After graduation, she joined the Army and participated in paratrooper training while ultimately following a path into military intelligence. Washburn, now a 1st lieutenant based out of Fort Stewart, Ga., served as part of a Cultural Support Team designed to attach women to existing special ops units with the express purpose of relating more effectively to local women.

On Sunday night, the Philadelphia Eagles will honor one of their own, a former cheerleader who has served two tours in Afghanistan as an Army intelligence officer. Rachel Washburn, age 25, hasn't had a typical career path, to put it mildly. She joined the Eagles' cheerleading squad from 2007 to 2009 while a student at Drexel University. After graduation, she joined the Army and participated in paratrooper training while ultimately following a path into military intelligence.

The U.S. Army general in charge of training recently wrote about the service's examination of gender neutral standards to open the infantry and other combat-arms jobs to female soldiers. The piece by Gen. Robert Cone, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, appears in the November issue of Army Magazine, the same month three female Marines made history by graduating from Marine infantry training. Last January, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered all services to open combat-arms roles to women that so far have been reserved for men.

The Marine Corps may have to change its physical standards in order to put females in positions to one day lead infantry platoons in combat. Both the Marine Corps and the Army continue to wrestle with the mandate that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued in January, directing the U.S. military to open hundreds of combat-arms jobs that have been closed to female servicemembers. So far, the Marines have been out ahead.