The Marine Corps announced plans to stand up an experimental task force comprised of both men and women volunteers in primarily ground-combat-arms specialties for about a year so analysts can assess their performance.  The task force will be comprised of about 25 percent women and will help the Corps assess the outcome of physical demands Marines must meet in the execution of individual and collective tasks, Brig. Gen. George W. Smith Jr. said. 

An approximately 460-Marine task force is slated to activate this summer at Camp Lejeune, N.C., allowing informed, female Marines the opportunity to volunteer as test subjects in occupational specialties that have been heretofore held only by men.  Female volunteers accepted for the task force’s combat-arms cohort must first report to military occupational specialty schools to learn the entry-level tasks for respective ground-combat-arms jobs.

Planners also intend to send the task force to the Corps’ premier combat training center in the fall to  Twentynine Palms, Calif., and to mountain-warfare training in Bridgeport, Calif.  The task force’s headquarters element is slated to have a male commander and a female senior-enlisted advisor.

Smith said all Marines must have “the physical capacity to meet the demands of those occupational specialties in the operating forces, which in some cases is significantly different and greater than what we find in our entry-level training pipeline.”

Smith gave hiking as an example and mentioned the 20-kilometer hike required to complete entry-level infantry training. He said although it is “something to certainly be proud of,” it is a one-time event that must be sustained in the operating forces. He went on to describe the standard, progressive hike program a Marine must undergo at an infantry battalion – conceding it was an extreme example: “You do a hike program over the course of many months. You’re hiking, week in and week out, extended distances well in excess of 20 kilometers.”

The Army has not announced a similar approach but has unilaterally opened field artillery officer positions open to women.