The Navy Gets Its First Female SEAL Candidate

NPR ^ | July 21, 2017 | LAUREL WAMSLEY

[nickcarraway]

The Navy says it has its first female candidates for two elite special operations jobs previously closed to women — including a prospective SEAL.

One woman is in the pipeline to be a SEAL officer, and another is on the path to becoming a special warfare combatant crewman. The news was first reported by Military.com, an independent website. The Navy declined to identify the candidates, citing security considerations.

The announcement comes more than 18 months after the Pentagon declared that women can now serve in front-line combat positions.

"They are the first candidates that have made it this far in the process," Lt. Cmdr. Mark Walton, spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command, told the Two-Way.

Whoever these unnamed trailblazers are, the path ahead for them won't be easy. To become a SEAL or SWCC, they'll need to make it through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, or BUD/S, which is designed to be extremely physically and mentally demanding.

Few candidates who undertake the training emerge as SEALs or special boat operators. The enlisted SEAL attrition rate is 73 to 75 percent, according to the Navy, while the SWCC attrition rate is 63 percent.

The SEAL officer program has a higher rate of success: 65 percent of candidates make it through. The officer program isn't easier, though — the Navy attributes the differing success rates to a larger number of candidates in the enlisted program.

Female candidates for these jobs will have to complete the same training that men do, without any allowances for differing average physical capabilities.

What makes the training so difficult?

"It's different for everyone," Walton said. "It could be the physical stuff, it could be mental, it could be medical. There could be a lot of different reasons."

While the two candidates are now closer to these elite Navy positions than a woman has ever been, it may be a while before one of them finally gets the job.

"It would be premature to speculate as to when we will see the first woman SEAL or SWCC graduate," Walton told NPR. "It may take months and potentially years."

Female candidates aren't the only change to come to the Navy's elite operations. Walton confirmed that SWCC now includes one transgender person.

And if the two women in the Navy's special operations pipeline are successful, we may not get much detail.

"If you announce who they are, that removes the point of them becoming a special operator," said Walton. "I guess we'll see what we do ... when we get there."

[Ohioan]

Undermining traditional sex roles undermines the culture, which to a large measure reflects sexual mores hammered out over the centuries of recorded interaction.

Egalitarian premises, here as in economics, all forms of social interaction, education, medicine--you name it--ultimately reflect an inability to accept reality. That is not a good thing. Not good for men; not good for women. It interferes with all sorts of pursuits, including the "pursuit of happiness," even though those premises are often justified as having exactly the opposite effect.

Feminist War On Love & Reason.

[DPMD]

We already have a former SEAL who crossed over to the faux-fem side.

[DPMD]

Kara Hultgren, pat shroeder’s human sacrifice on the altar of diluting the military.

[DPMD]

So, special sensitivity training for the SEAL instructors?

[Uncle Sam 911]

Exactly but I would almost bet my mortgage that some woman gets a trident......one way or another, mostly another.

[Uncle Sam 911]

And there is a reason for that.

[Paal Gulli]

DevGru’s/ST6’s Black Squadron includes women. Black Squadron does advance recon (i.e., HUMINT collection, i.e., spying) and women are on the team for “profile softening.” And because there are places in the world — particularly in Muslim countries — where men don’t go without attracting undue attention. Sometimes the women even operate single-O.

But none of them wears the Trident.

[relictele]

Crikey I’d forgotten about her.

Looks like she spent far more time posing for glamour shots than training in the cockpit.

[relictele]

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=34&ved=0ahUKEwiXyY2UlpvVAhWm8oMKHQSeDaUQFgihATAh&url=http%3A%2F%2Farticles.latimes.com%2F1995-03-22%2Fnews%2Fmn-45801_1_investigation-report&usg=AFQjCNE2Y8cSucLhUmTddl8GEnxZu1rV6Q

[relictele]

http://www.returnofkings.com/39218/the-deadly-consequences-of-feminist-propaganda-in-the-us-navy

[trisham]

Elite groups of men AREN'T SO ELITE if females can do it, RIGHT? Most MALES cannot be SEALs so what makes a female think SHE can do it if most males cannot?

*********************

Silly women. They shouldn't even think about these things.

[jimfree]

I mentioned Kara Hultgren to mrs. jimfree just this a.m. Such a rush to CQ a woman that they let her try before she was ready. Each officer in the chain that moved her along is long retired every damned one of them should be shot.

[bkrdoug]

WONDERFUL WAY TO DESTROY THE seals!!!!!!

[libh8er]

Is she the ‘comfort woman’ for the rest of the team ?

[Uncle Sam 911]

Yep.

[DBeers]

I wait impatiently for Trump to put an end to Obama’s ‘transformation’ of the Military from a primarily fine tuned fighting force of uniform units to a collectivist social justice experiment of diverse individuals

[ex91B10]

And lose their records...

[Chode]

according to teh article, it's no rumor

[Machavelli]

I thought that Demi Moore showed us how its done. As for me, I love women, however, when it comes to death and destruction you can’t been a mean SOB man.

[Uncle Sam 911]

Demi Moore is the dream girl of the lunatic left, women who breeze through SEAL and other SF training and show men how it is done. At least how it is done in the fantasy world of hollywood.