NY Times, New York
A woman has joined a United States Navy special warfare unit for the first time, the latest gender barrier to fall in the five years since females became eligible to apply for any combat job in the military.
The service said on Thursday that the woman was the first female graduate from a navy special warfare training pipeline that directly supports the Sea, Air, and Land (Seal) teams and other elite commando units.
A navy spokesman said the woman would not be identified, which is a standard policy for members of the Special Forces. In a statement, Rear Admiral Hugh Howard III, the commander of the US Naval Special Warfare Command, said the woman's graduation represented "an extraordinary accomplishment".
"Like her fellow operators, she demonstrated the character, cognitive and leadership attributes required to join our force," he said.
The navy said in a news release that the servicewoman was among 17 graduates of a programme to become what it calls special warfare combatant-craft (SWCC) crewmen.
SWCC sailors specialise in what the navy calls "covert insertion and extraction" operations using small, stealthy, heavily armed watercraft capable of high speeds that can operate independently, or be delivered by larger ships and helicopters.
In addition to receiving training in weapons and navigation, SWCC sailors also go through parachute training in order to drop their speedboats into the ocean from cargo planes, such as during the 2009 mission to rescue Americans aboard the hijacked ship Maersk Alabama in the Indian Ocean. Only about 35 per cent of SWCC candidates graduate, the navy said.
The woman who graduated on Thursday will be among the operators on three special boat teams that transport navy Seals and conduct their own classified missions, the Associated Press reported.
