First Woman Joins Green Berets

A member of an Army Special Forces unit in 2017 in Afghanistan. The Special Forces are known colloquially as the Green Berets.Credit…Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images

Several weeks ago I reveived a heads-up about the impending graduation, but waived it off, preferring to wait until the actual event. Due diligence and a dislike of drafting retractions held me back, but no more. While the Army is withholding specifics, the enlisted woman has received her SF tab and wears the Green Beret. All I can say is, Bravo Zulu!

ninja sends.

…After Graduating From Special Forces Training

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff

WASHINGTON — A female National Guard soldier graduated from Army Special Forces training on Thursday and earned the title of Green Beret, the first woman to do so since the Pentagon opened all combat jobs, including those in the Special Operations community, to women in 2016.

The woman, an enlisted soldier, was on track to graduate in April, but was forced to repeat part of the training before continuing to the final portion, known as Robin Sage, which tests the candidates on a range of skills considered essential to becoming a Green Beret, according to military officials. The New York Times first reported the woman’s ascension through the roughly yearlong course in February.

The soldier’s name and other biographical information have been withheld by the Army for personal and operational security reasons as she enters the secretive Special Operations community.

But her socially distant graduation, during which she received her Special Forces tab and donned her Green Beret alongside her classmates, is a landmark moment, as the Green Berets were one of the last assignments in the Army without any women. In February, there was at least one other woman, a medical sergeant, going through Special Forces training.

“Each and every one of you demonstrated the ability to meet the baseline standards and competencies for admission to our regiment,” said Lt. Gen. Francis M. Beaudette, the commander of the Army’s Special Operations Command, who presided over the graduation ceremony held in a hangar at Pope Army Airfield at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, according to a statement.

“From here, you will go forward and join the storied formation of the Green Berets, where you will do what you are trained to do: challenge assumptions, break down barriers, smash through stereotypes, innovate and achieve the impossible,” General Beaudette said. “Thankfully, after today, our Green Beret men and women will forever stand in the hearts of free people everywhere.”

In recent years, the Army and the Marines have slowly filled previously restricted roles with women. Though more than 700 women in the Army are in previously restricted jobs, a position in the Special Operations forces, which have crushingly high physical standards, had long been considered by some as unattainable for them.

Roughly 70,000 of the approximately 470,000 troops in the Army are women.

In 2017, a woman was accepted into the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite light infantry unit under the Joint Special Operations Command. More than a dozen women have graduated from the Army’s grueling Ranger school in Georgia.

In 1981, before all combat jobs were open to women, Capt. Kate Wilder officially graduated from Special Forces training. She was forced out by her superiors in the final days of her course, even though she had passed it in its entirety. The Army investigated the episode in the following months and subsequently sent her a graduation certificate dated for Aug. 21, 1980.

Best of luck in your new path, Green Beret. Read the rest here: New York Times

Thanks, ninja.

Category: Army, Bravo Zulu, Guest Post, ninja