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SecNav, CNO: Women should serve on subs

Women should be allowed to serve aboard submarines, and the Navy is “moving out aggressively” to make it happen, according to the service’s top civilian.

“I believe women should have every opportunity to serve at sea, and that includes aboard submarines,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Thursday in a statement to Navy Times.

His comment comes one week after Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told congressional lawmakers that he thought it was time to end the ban against women on submarines.

Mullen’s successor, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, also said he is “very comfortable” addressing the crewing policy.

“There are some particular issues with integrating women into the submarine force; issues we must work through in order to achieve what is best for the Navy and our submarine force,” Roughead said in a statement. “Accommodations are a factor, but not insurmountable.”

Navy Times requested responses from Mabus and Roughead after Mullen called for ending the ban, which was part of submitted answers to written questions posed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mullen was responding to a question on women in combat and whether any policy changes are needed. He zeroed in on women serving aboard submarines.

“As an advocate for improving the diversity of our force, I believe we should continue to broaden opportunities for women,” Mullen wrote. “One policy I would like to see changed is the one barring their service aboard submarines.”

Roughead, in his statement, stopped short of announcing any major policy changes.

“Having commanded a mixed gender surface combatant, I am very comfortable addressing integrating women into the submarine force. I am familiar with the issues as well as the value of diverse crews,” he said. “The Navy has examined the feasibility of assigning women to submarines over the years, and I have been personally engaged on this.”

Roughead said the Navy must “manage the community as a whole, such as force growth and retention within a small warfare community.”

“The size of the submarine force is much smaller than the surface and aviation forces and personnel management is more exacting,” he continued. “This has had and will continue to have my personal attention as we work toward increasing the diversity of our Navy afloat and ashore.”

Mullen, who became chairman two years ago, had shown interest in a policy change during his 2½ years as CNO, and had asked the submarine community to look at the issue, said Capt. John Kirby, Mullen’s spokesman then and now.

That “look” was not complete by the time he was elevated to his present job, Kirby said, but opening the submarine community to women “is something he has maintained an interest in.”

Women, who make up about 12 percent of the 1.2 million U.S. service members on active duty, are by policy excluded from traditional front-line combat jobs. But combat roles have become blurred during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which irregular warfare marked by insurgent roadside bombs and a lack of the frontlines evident in traditional warfare have brought women assigned to jobs as corpsmen, military police and other “combat enabler” jobs into harm’s way, much as their combat brethren.

The Navy as of May had 7,900 female officers and 44,000 female sailors, comprising about 15 percent of officers and sailors in the 330,500-strong active component. But while women have been assigned to surface warships since 1993, they remain banned from submarine crews, naval special warfare teams and conventional riverine boat crews. Female officers and sailors can get qualified to work on nuclear reactors but are restricted to serving on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, not on any of the Navy’s 71 nuclear-powered submarines.

Submariners live in exceptionally close quarters, even taking turns sleeping in the same bunks on attack submarines. Officials have said the lack of privacy and the cost of reconfiguring subs already tightly packed with gear and crew members make it difficult to introduce female crew.

Mullen thinks those issues can be resolved.

“He believes that the physical barriers … can be overcome, as they have been overcome on surface combatants,” Kirby said.

Staff writer Mark D. Faram contributed to this story.

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