First woman ever completes US navy elite training

‘Like her fellow operators, she demonstrated the character, cognitive and leadership attributes required to join our force,’ Rear Admiral says

Five years after women became eligible for any job in the US military, a woman has been included in a navy special warfare unit for the first time.

The navy said on Thursday that the woman was the first female to make it through the special warfare training pipeline that allows individuals to join the navy SEALs and other elite units.

A spokesperson for the navy told the Associated Press that the woman wouldn’t be identified, something which is standard practice for members of the special forces.

Rear Admiral Hugh Howard III said in a statement: “Becoming the first woman to graduate from a Naval Special Warfare training pipeline is an extraordinary accomplishment, and we are incredibly proud of our teammate. Like her fellow operators, she demonstrated the character, cognitive and leadership attributes required to join our force.”

The servicewoman was one of 17 graduates of the programme to become what the navy calls Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewmen – SWCC.

She will be part of a unit that trains at the Naval Special Warfare Center in Coronado in the San Diego Bay in southern California.

SWCCs focus on what the navy calls “covert insertion and extraction” that requires extensive knowledge of weapons, engineering, navigation, and parachuting. Around 35 per cent of SWCC candidates graduate.

The AP reported that the woman who was among the 17 who graduated on Thursday will be a part of the three special boat teams that transport navy SEALs as well as complete classified missions of their own.

According to CNN, the servicewoman is one of 18 women who have attempted to become SWCCs.

Out of them, 14 didn’t complete the special warfare training that lasts 37 weeks. A spokesperson told the outlet that three other women are currently training to become SWCCs.

Women made up two per cent of enlisted forces when the draft came to an end in 1973. They made up eight per cent of the officer corps in the US military, according to a Council on Foreign Relations analysis of Defence Department Data. The review didn’t include figures from the Coast Guard.

Those numbers had increased to 16 and 19 per cent by 2018. That same year, First Lieutenant Marina Hierl became the first woman in charge of an infantry platoon in the marine corps, two years after the Pentagon made all combat jobs open for women applicants.

A woman in the national guard became the first female Green Beret last year after completing army special forces training.

Chief Master Sergeant JoAnne Bass in the US air force became the first woman to serve in a top-ranking noncommissioned position of a US military service in August 2020. On 8 July, she posted a tweet in honour of the first woman to enlist in the air force.

There have been recent high-profile examples of sexism in the military. President Biden nominated two women in March – air force General Jacqueline Van Ovost and army Lieutenant General Laura Richardson – to lead two of the military’s combatant commands.

President Joe Biden is flanked by the nominees to positions as 4-star Combatant Commanders, General Jacqueline Van Ovost and Lieutenant General Laura Richardson, on March 8, 2021. (AFP via Getty Images)

But their nominations were delayed until Mr Biden entered office because the Pentagon worried that their nominations might be rejected by former President Donald Trump because they were women.

“They were chosen because they were the best officers for the jobs, and I didn’t want their promotions derailed because someone in the Trump White House saw that I recommended them or thought [the Department of Defense] was playing politics,” Trump Defence Secretary Mark Esper told The New York Times in an interview earlier this year. “This was not the case. They were the best qualified. We were doing the right thing.”