First Woman Passes SEAL Assessment
No, no… the “First Woman” does not mean Melania Trump.
The headline of this blog means that a woman for the first time passed the SEAL officer assessment and selection but won’t be joining their ranks.
This was reported by Military.com the Washington Examiner and the Business Insider.
The Washington Examiner reports:
The unidentified woman completed the screening earlier this year, according to Military.com. The news was disclosed this month at a meeting of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
Despite women being permitted to be considered for SEAL openings since 2016, no woman has made it through the grueling selection process.
Candidates for Navy SEAL officer assessment and selection are chosen from Reserve Officer Training Corps programs, Officer Candidate School, and service academies.
And even after making it through the two-week selection this year, the woman was not chosen for a SEAL contract as she had not selected the SEALs as her top choice of career path.
Then…
According to Lt. Grace Olechowski, force integration officer with Naval Special Warfare Command, five women have been invited to the officer assessment and selection since 2016, three have attempted it, and only one has finished.
About 180 people every year are picked to attend the SEAL officer assessment and selection.
Category: Navy
As long as standards were maintained, good for her.
Concur. Navy, do not screw this up. Learn from the Army’s mistakes.
Read somewhere last year that several chicks…er ladies,er…females have tried out for USAF Special Tactics mos’s. PJ’s, CÇT. Anyone heard anything?
“Anyone heard anything?”
Nope, not a queef.
I heard a queef once… ‘What we didn’t know… was our [muffdiving] mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The [queefs] come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s… kinda like ol’ squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the [queef] comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d start poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the [queef] would go away. Sometimes [s]he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that [queef], [s]he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a [queef], [s]he’s got…lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When [s]he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until [s]he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces.’
“I am a Woman. What’s your superpower?”
Girl Power 2019!
I look forward to seeing more female candidates for assessment.
Having babies and creating food for same for the first year +/- seems to be a superpower. I (and about 50% of the population) can’t seem to do it.
https://youtu.be/rptW7zOPX2E
They didn’t let her move forward because it wasn’t her first choice? Since when did the military give a shit what you listed on your dream sheets?
Reading between the lines, she didn’t want to move forward. What’re the odds they pressured the hell out of this ensign to go to BUD/S and she told them she’s not interested?
Looks like she did it to challenge herself, not because she really wanted to be a SEAL. More than likely she was content to be able to say she did pass it.
Regardless of gender wtf would the Navy pick someone, especially an Officer to go to BUDS who really didnt want to be there?.
I’m sure if she wanted to she could have gotten the slot.
Sort of like how Jesse Ventura could have crossed over and actually trained to get SEAL qualified and get the NEC, instead of staying UDT.
But he chose to stay UDT and then flap his scraggly Cock holster that being a BUDS Graduation meant he rated the trident… and insinuate he was on the ground in Vietnam.
Screening – is a broad term – my best guess is she passed the screening test and a physical. All in all it means nothing. There are MANY cross fit females and tri-athletes that would blow the screening test away.
Passing the screening – All that does is qualify you to be selected to attend BUDS – I mean that is great she passed but it really doesn’t mean anything – I don’t know why they are gobbling up press on this other than it is a precursor to a female actually attending BUDS.
I have been away from the Navy for a while but I am sure if the screening test was gender normed that would make news.
Did she get to talk tough?
I once told a Squad Leader that, less than a month later I was pinned Specialist and made a Team Leader.
(We hashed it out in the tall grass a couple buildings over. The Old(er) Army way…)
Had a friend of mine whose daughter was a Crossfit Goddess who absolutely smoked OCS and TBS and was selected to give Marine Infantry Officers Course a shot.
She was dropped on the first day, along with several over Males and the only other female candidate.
Overall 37 highly qualified women have Volunteered to try OIC.
To date only 2 have finished it. This was after they redid the curriculum so a lot of the physical requirements were not ” Front end loaded” and gave students a chance to retest and reroll to the next course.
So…officer “assessment and selection” is NOT actually BUD/S? Whoop-dee-do. In other news…
Yep…Just another “You’ve come a long way baby” opportunity to flaunt what amounts to nothing.
I have absolutely no problem with any female having the same opportunity to do any job that a man does. I do have a problem with lowering of the standards to get them that job in the quest for political correctness/equal opportunity. A chain is only as strong as its’ weakest link. The standards that were put in place were what it was felt they needed to be for mission requirements.
For the females that want to and can pass the rigorous requirements I say BZ, you go girl.
I think this is one of the FIRST Military Times Article Comment sections where the comments were on topic and not filled with…”I make X # of dollars a day……” Maybe they took a lesson from TAH admins and put a spam filter on?
Nothing wrong with looking at and assesssing women.
Set whatever standards you deem neccessary for the job
and test them to your hearts content. Those that meet
your needs should be given every opportunity.
Those that don’t should be thanked for trying and sent
home with a gift bag.
Sure, but WHY is this newsworthy? We don’t have any stories of the dozens of men who pass assessment every quarter – so wake me when a woman passes BUD/S and SQT – then gets “pinned” and assigned to a team.
Spit or swallow?
Spaceballs? There goes the neighborhood.
Don’t get Sonntag-ged.
I was going to say something politically incorrect, but I am already in enough trouble, for trying to troll TOW for being a communist sympathizer.
And how many times does he have to tell you that he isn’t one? Especially when his wife is of Cambodian descent and has family who have had to flee Cambodia because of the Khmer Rouge? I’m pretty sure that’s really getting on his nerves.
OMG, what a coincidence.
I have a black friend too!
I doubt you have a friend at all. Of any color.
That’s not what I asked you.
You do realize that Cambodia is in Asia right? They are not black.
Ok man, let me explain.
“I have a black friend” is a excuse racist people in the Democrat Party use trying to prove they cannot possibly be racist, because they have black friends. Over the years it have become a meme used against people that claim that “because I have X I cannot possibly hate X”.
You are claiming TOW cannot be a communist sympathizer because his wife was a victim of communism in Cambodia/Kampuchea when the Khmer Rouge ruled the country.
This is a false premise because argument #1 of all communist scums around the world is that “X country was not really socialist/communist/whatever-they-call-their-version-of-oppression”.
In other words, people that have lived under socialism can still be socialist, like Merkel, etc.
Hence the “I have a black friend too” funny meme.
Ahh.
I forgot to say “splain” instead of explain.
Put the shovel down, Joe.
He look another first!
Look what I found:
“Although the Qu’ran does not have verse explicitly in favor of homosexuality, it does have verses which show awareness of male beauty. These are promises made to Muslim men who make it to Heaven.
SURA LII:24
“And there shall wait on them [the Muslim men] young boys of their own, as fair as virgin pearls.”
SURA LXXVI:19
“They shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth, who will seem like scattered pearls to the beholders.”
Basis for Manlove Thursday?
So back to female Navy SEALs. . . Are we just running out of men? I know we have to always strive for the first female to do something (for what that’s worth in the grand scheme of things) but when it comes to military readiness, I just don’t care. Why strive to find that one woman who might be able to do it, when there are apparently plenty of men who can do it. The fact of the matter is, all male units are easier to deal with than mixed. I’ve been in both and it’s just a fact, regardless of who offensive people may think it is. Females serve an important part of our military. I’ve seen plenty who are kick ass at what they do and make terrific leaders – better than some of the men in the same role in many cases. This is not about not liking woman in military. My problem is trying to shoehorn them into a role for which they are (in general) not well suited.
For those who gripe about lack of promotion and advancement, I offer you all of the male colonels and generals WHO NEVER WERE INFANTRY. I knew (or knew of) quite a few. It can be done without being infantry or they never would have gotten there. Infantry isn’t the be all end all. Perhaps you’re mad that some lady won’t ever be USMC Commandant. Well. . .I got some politically incorrect thoughts on that, too, but that’s for another rant.
It’s about equal opportunity. DoD was being sued by a number of groups (chiefly the Service Women’s Action Network),and they were going to lose the lawsuit. In America you simply can’t exclude an entire group of people from a given job simply because of their sex. You have to give them a chance to try. As long as standards are maintained, no problem. The concern is that there will be pressure to lower standards to get the ‘first’ in every job, and that is a valid concern. All of the services learned the hard way that some of their standards could not be logically traced to a job requirement other than ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it). Officer assignments in all of the services are different from enlisted. An enlistee can simply refuse to sign the contract if they are not getting what they want- true, they may be given very limited choices, but they can always walk away. Officers, on the other hand, volunteer to be commissioned, and it is really up to each service how to assign them by branch/specialty, etc. Yes you submit some sort of ‘wish list’, but that is secondary to the needs of the service. In the Army, 2LTs list every branch in order of preference, so technically whatever they get they get one of their choices… The Army claims that most new officers get one of their top four choices. SOF is different of course, and has its own problems. SEAL is one of the few SOF pipelines that accepts newly commissioned officers- Army SOF (Ranger Regiment, SF, CA, Psyops, Aviation, even the Intel SMUs) all require a successful tour in the conventional Army. General Officers is another issue. While there are tons of 1-Stars that come from non-combat arms branches, it starts to narrow drastically at the 2-star level. When you start looking at 2-star those positions are mostly Division CG, Corps DCG, and 4-star command G/J-3 billets, which are mostly Big 3 Combat Arms (Armor, Infantry, Field Artillery, with a few Aviators and SF thrown in for fun). The non-combat… Read more »
One more thought:
Generally speaking, pun intended, officers have to command at one rank to command at the next. The command board is held immediately following the promotion board. If you did not command a battalion you are very unlikely to command a brigade.
If you don’t command a brigade or hold a centrally selected General Staff position as an O-6, your odds for promotion are much lower because you are not competitive for those command or senior staff at the GO level.
So, yes, there are lots of non-Infantry Colonels, but most of them are terminal.
Ever notice that some women, not all, run on being the first women to hold such and such a position and therefore folks should vote for them.
Then, after elected or nominated to the post someone will ask about it and the woman snaps back – I got this position because I was the most qualified and not because I’m a woman.
You can’t have it both ways… uh, well, I guess some can.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to see them break through the glass ceiling, but it is a little disingenous how some do it and then become offended at the suggestion that being a woman had anything to do with it.
Glass ceiling?
Hardly.
Basically, assessment is, “Can you meet the minimum requirements?” But as anyone in a competitive field (SpecOps, nukes, aviation, etc.,) will tell you, minimum ain’t gonna get it done. It just establishes the first hurdle to be crossed. Many more (and more difficult) hurdles must be overcome before actually becoming a part of that community.
Bottom line–mentally, women probably do have the ability to function in these communities. Physically, at least as far as SpecOp community goes, not so much.