Provisions in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require women to register for the military draft, while carving out an exemption from serving in front-line roles, have sparked vigorous debate among combat veterans and enlisted personnel about the wisdom of such changes and their likely impact on the armed forces.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) announced the filing of the bill, S. 4638, last month. On Aug. 1, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted unanimously, 28–0, to move its version forward for a full Senate vote in the near future. The House of Representatives approved its own version of the bill on June 13.
The 607-page bill authorizes topline funding of $911.8 billion for the military and contains a number of provisions aimed at improving military life. They include an increase in monthly pay for junior enlisted personnel, housing allowances for junior personnel on sea duty, extensions of bonus schemes that were set to expire, and making promotions that were subject to delays in Senate confirmation effective retroactively.
The bill also pushes back slightly against the efforts of the Biden administration, often through executive orders, to bring the military into line with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals by amending the United States Code to forbid use of Department of Defense money and facilities for gender alteration surgeries.
In other ways, the bill dramatically widens the front of the Biden administration’s push for inclusivity and diversity by revising selective service requirements to include women.
Subtitle J of the bill reads, “The committee recommends a series of provisions that would require women to register for selective service under the same conditions as currently applied to men.”
Section 529B of the bill contains an exemption that would, in theory, limit the impact of the proposed change.
It states, “The committee recommends a provision that would specify that women drafted into service under the Selective Service System may not be compelled to join combat roles that were closed to women prior to December 3, 2015, train or become qualified in a combat arms military occupational specialty, or join a combat arms unit.”
This stipulation notwithstanding, members of the military community are sharply divided on what effect the bill will have if passed in its current form.
Upholding Standards
The impact of gender integration on physical fitness requirements and standards in the military has been a source of controversy for years.
Even after President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, announced in December 2015, that previously all-male combat positions would be open to women, the number of women seeking entry to the Marine Corps was small and the number who passed fitness tests was even smaller.
As of August 2017, nearly two years after Carter declared the far-reaching policy change, fewer than one percent of female inductees into the corps sought out combat roles, and of the number who did, only 25 percent met the physical requirements, according to a Marine Times report citing Training and Education command data. Fully 96 percent of male Marines who took the same tests passed, the report said. Those women who did not pass had to seek out noncombat roles.
Given these realities, and the exemption from combat roles in the new NDAA bill, some observers do not see the change to the selective service criteria as especially significant.
“There are plenty of noncombat and support roles in the U.S. military, and expanding the draft to include women does not mean putting women in the infantry or the Rangers,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a Germantown, Maryland-based consultancy, told The Epoch Times.
“When conservatives slap the DEI label on everything they don’t like, it loses its effect and makes it more difficult to stop the growth of DEI where it matters.”
Recruitment Challenges
The danger of aggression from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, various terrorist groups, and other hostile powers pushes the Department of Defense to ensure a large enough military to protect American interests.
In fiscal year 2023, the Department of Defense missed its recruitment goals by no fewer than 41,000 personnel.
“The Military Services continue to face unprecedented recruiting challenges,” the department’s recruiting and retention report for the year ending in May 2023 states.
As interest in national service dwindles among the younger population, the danger of an understaffed military incapable of carrying out its functions grows, said Scott McQuarrie, a former officer in both the Army and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who now works as an attorney.
“We must have a sufficiently sized, adequately trained and equipped military in order to deter potential adversaries from drawing us into what would be a devastating conflict or, in the event of a conflict, to protect and defend the homeland and our national security interests,” McQuarrie told The Epoch Times.
“If we cannot fill the ranks with volunteers and/or afford a volunteer force, what are the alternatives? The American people must answer that difficult question,” he said.
McQuarrie said trying to maintain military readiness while relying exclusively on the pool of young men who volunteer for service might lead to an unpalatable outcome: lowering the standards and requirements for male inductees.
The armed forces took such a course during the Vietnam War under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in a program known as Project 100,000. McQuarrie described Project 100,000 as nothing short of a disaster for the military and the country.
He suggested that drafting a small number of women to serve in noncombat roles could be one way to address the personnel shortfall and maintain the highest standards for men who do take on frontline combat roles.
“I believe the political climate today is conducive to addressing these questions, but it will happen only if enough leaders have the political will and moral courage to put the issues on the table for the American people to discuss and decide,” McQuarrie said.
Maintaining Cohesion
Others who are familiar with the realities of training and combat are sober about the practical challenges of upholding standards while incorporating larger numbers of women into the armed forces.
If the NDAA passes in its current form, it is not impossible to envision a near future where more women seek entry to—and are granted—frontline combat roles.
But given time-tested differences between the sexes’ physical aptitudes, this is all but certain to require adjusting physical standards, they say.
“I think the message that citizenship sometimes comes with an obligation to one’s country is an entirely healthy message to send to both sexes, not just young men,” Sebastian Junger, a journalist and documentarian who spent years embedded with U.S. forces in combat zones in Afghanistan, told The Epoch Times.
But there can be no illusions about the arduous nature of frontline duty and the immense physical exertions it involves, he stressed. Junger drew an analogy between the U.S. military and fire departments, which are subject to calls for diversification, often from people who have never been firefighters themselves.
“Combat, like firefighting, is incredibly rigorous and demanding, and efforts to integrate fire departments with women have found themselves at a kind of crossroads. Do you scale down the physical requirements in order to get more women into firehouses, or keep the number of pull-ups you have to do exactly the same and have virtually no women passing?” he said.
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