Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is making good on his promise to push women out of combat roles—he just won’t say it out loud.
The Pentagon has launched a formal review of the “effectiveness” of women serving in ground combat positions, tasking the Institute for Defense Analyses with examining whether female soldiers are meeting standards and whether having them in these roles helps maintain “the most lethal military.”
Of course, this review comes from a man who literally said women shouldn’t be in combat at all.
WHAT’S GOING ON: A seven-page memo from Defense Undersecretary Anthony Tata, first reported by NPR, ordered Army and Marine leaders to hand over data on readiness, training, performance, casualties, and “command climate” of ground combat units by January 15.
The memo also requested any internal research on “the integration of women in combat,” framing the review as an evaluation of what’s happened in the decade since the military opened all combat positions to women in 2015.
About 3,800 women serve in Army combat units, and roughly 700 hold ground combat jobs in the Marines. All of them are now under scrutiny.
THE DETAILS: Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson insisted the review is about standards, not gender.
“Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman,” Wilson said. “Under Secretary Hegseth, the Department of War will not compromise standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda—this is common sense.”
But here’s the thing: Hegseth has already told us what he thinks.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan Show in November 2024, the same month Trump nominated him. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
BUT BUT BUT: During his confirmation hearing, Hegseth softened his stance, telling senators that women would continue serving in combat as long as “standards” remain high.
That appeared to be lip service. Since taking over the Pentagon, he’s bragged about killing the “Women, Peace & Security” program—calling it a “woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative” even though it was actually enacted under the first Trump administration.
OF COURSE: The review comes alongside a pattern of pushing female leaders out of the military entirely.
A Navy captain who would have been the first woman commanding Naval Special Warfare forces overseeing Navy SEALs was ousted. So was Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, a top admiral whose name appeared on a “woke” list.
WHY IT MATTERS: This isn’t a good-faith evaluation of military readiness. When the guy ordering the review has already publicly declared women shouldn’t be in combat, the outcome is predetermined.
The “standards” language is cover—a way to manufacture justification for rolling back a decade of progress.
Women who’ve met every qualification, passed every test, and served their country in the most demanding roles are now being told their presence needs to be studied all over again. Not because there’s evidence of a problem, but because the man running the Pentagon has an ideological agenda of his own.