Marines may ask to keep women out of some combat jobs

The Marine Corps might ask that some of its combat positions remain closed off to women, The Associated Press reported Friday.

Anonymous sources told the AP the Marines are expected to ask to keep several front-line combat jobs available only to men, though a final decision has not been reached.

{mosads}The military is facing a January deadline to open all of its jobs to women. Each branch has until the end of the month to ask for exceptions from Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who will decide whether to grant the requests.

If the Marines Corps seeks to limit the combat positions, it would put the service branch at odds with the Army, Navy and Air Force, which are expected to allow women to serve in all positions.

The news comes after a controversial Marine study found that all-male ground combat units outperformed those with women.

The Marines study, a summary of which was released last week, said the ground combat units with both men and women were slower, less deadly and suffered injurey more often than those with just men.

The study has ignited a back-and-forth between the Navy secretary, the Marines and lawmakers.

After the release of the summary, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who is also the service secretary for the Marines, told NPR he thinks the study was biased. Marines who participated in the study responded by telling The Washington Post that Mabus threw them “under the bus.”

On Thursday, Reps. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) and Susan Davis (D-Calif.) said the House Armed Services Committee would be briefed by the Marines on the study.

“I echo some concerns by the secretary of the Navy related to, ‘Do we take a bunch of combat trained men and a bunch of non-combat trained support women and put them together, and just wonder how they’re going to do?’ ” said McSally, a retired Air Force colonel and the first female to fly in combat.

And Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) wrote a letter to Carter calling for Mabus’s resignation.

“It is my recommendation that immediate consideration be given to obtain the resignation of the Navy Secretary,” wrote Hunter, who served in the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He has openly disrespected the Marine Corps as an institution, and he insulted the competency of the Marines by disregarding their profession judgment, their combat experience and their quality of leadership.”