Written by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025 that require women to register for the military drafthave, despite the fact that an exception has been made to the requirement to serve in frontline roles, led to a heated debate among war veterans and service members about the wisdom of such changes and their likely impact on the armed forces.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Defense Committee, and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) announced the introduction of the bill, S. 4638, last month. On August 1, the Senate Budget Committee voted unanimously, 28-0, to bring its version to the Senate for a full vote in the near future.The House of Representatives passed its own version of the bill on June 13.

The 607-page bill authorizes $911.8 billion in top-line funding for the military and includes a number of provisions aimed at improving military life. They include an increase in monthly pay for junior enlisted men, housing allowances for junior enlisted men at sea, extensions of bonus plans that were set to expire and making retroactive promotions that had been subject to delays in Senate confirmation.

The bill also somewhat challenges the Biden administration’s efforts, often through executive orders, to align the military with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals. by changing US law to prohibit the use of Department of Defense funds and facilities for gender reassignment surgery.

In other ways, the bill significantly broadens the Biden administration’s efforts on inclusion and diversity, by revising Selective Service requirements to include women.

Subtitle J of the bill states: “The Committee recommends a series of provisions requiring women to register for Selective Service under the same conditions as currently apply to men.”

Section 529B of the bill contains an exception that would theoretically limit the impact of the proposed amendment.

It states: “The Commission recommends a provision specifying that Women enlisted under the Selective Service System cannot be forced to take on combat roles which were closed to women before 3 December 2015, are training or qualifying in a military occupational specialization in the field of combat arms, or are joining a combat arms unit.”

Despite this provision, members of the military community are divided over the bill’s implications if it passes in its current form.

Enforcement of standards

The impact of gender integration on physical fitness requirements and standards within the military has been a source of controversy for years.

Even after Ash Carter, Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama, announced in December 2015 that previously male-only combat positions would be open to women, the number of women enlisting in the Marine Corps remained small and the number of women passing fitness tests even smaller.

In August 2017, nearly two years after Carter announced the sweeping policy shift, fewer than 1 percent of female inductees into the Corps sought combat roles, and of those who did, only 25 percent met the physical requirements, according to a Marine Times report citing data from the Training and Education Command. A whopping 96 percent of male Marines who took the same tests passed, the report said. The women who failed were required to seek noncombat roles.

Given this reality and the combat roles exemption in the new NDAA law, Some observers do not consider the change in the criteria for selective service provision to be particularly significant.

“There are plenty of non-combat and support roles in the U.S. military, and expanding the draft to women does not mean including women in the infantry or the Rangers,” Keith Naughton, principal at Silent Majority Strategies, a consulting firm based in Germantown, Maryland, told The Epoch Times.

“When conservatives slap the DEI label on everything they don’t like, it loses its effectiveness and makes it harder to stop the growth of DEI where it matters.”

Challenges in recruitment

The threat of aggression from Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, various terrorist groups, and other hostile powers forces the Department of Defense to have a military large enough to protect American interests.

In the 2023 budget year, the Ministry of Defence missed its recruitment target by as much as 41,000 personnel.

“The armed forces continue to face unprecedented challenges in recruiting personnel,” the ministry’s recruitment and retention report for the year ending May 2023 said.

As interest in military service declines among younger people, the threat of the military becoming understaffed and unable to perform its duties grows, said Scott McQuarrie, a former officer in both the Army and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps who now works as a lawyer.

“We must have a sufficiently large, adequately trained and equipped military to prevent potential adversaries from engaging us in 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 can’t fill the ranks with volunteers and/or pay for a volunteer army, what are the alternatives? The American people must answer that difficult question,” he said.

According to McQuarrie, trying to maintain military readiness while relying solely on the pool of young men who volunteer could lead to an unpleasant outcome: lower standards and requirements for male recruits.

The armed forces followed a similar 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 an unmitigated disaster for the military and the country.

He suggested that recruiting a small number of women for non-combat roles could be a way to address the personnel shortage and maintain the highest standards for men who do take on frontline roles.

“I believe the political climate today is conducive to addressing these questions, but that will only happen 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 familiar with the realities of training and combat are sober about the practical challenges of maintaining standards while incorporating more women into the armed forces.

If the NDAA passes in its current form, it is not impossible to imagine a near future in which more women apply for and receive frontline positions.

But Given the differences in physical makeup between the sexes that have been demonstrated over time, it is almost certain that this will require an adjustment in physical standards, they say.

“I think the message that citizenship sometimes comes with an obligation to your country is a perfectly healthy message to send to both sexes, not just young men,” Sebastian Junger, a journalist and documentary filmmaker who spent years with the U.S. military in war zones in Afghanistan, told The Epoch Times.

But there can be no illusions about the grueling nature of frontline service and the immense physical demands it entails, he stressed. Junger drew an analogy between the U.S. military and fire departments, which face calls for diversification, often from people who have never been firefighters themselves.

“Combat, like firefighting, is incredibly rigorous and demanding, and efforts to integrate women into fire departments are at a bit of a crossroads. Do you scale back the physical demands to get more women into fire stations, or do you keep the number of pull-ups you have to do exactly the same and have virtually no women come through?” he said.

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