First Lt. Nalise Gaither, leader of a Female Engagement Team, briefs fellow paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team on her meeting with several women of a village in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, in this file photo. — Reuters WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon formally announced on Thursday its decision to lift its ban on women in front-line combat roles, a move hailed by supporters as a historic step toward gender equality in America's armed forces after 11 years of non-stop war. “The Department's goal in rescinding the rule is to ensure that the mission is met with the best-qualified and most capable people, regardless of gender,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a statement. President Barack Obama fully supports the Pentagon's decision to lift a ban on women serving in frontline combat roles, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday. Carney told reporters Obama is “very pleased” with the decision and “fully supports this effort to expand opportunities for women.” Allowing women to serve in combat roles will strengthen the US military's ability to win wars, Panetta said Thursday. “Our military is more capable, and our force is more powerful, when we use all of the great diverse strengths of the American people,” Panetta said at a Pentagon ceremony in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. “Every person in today's military has made a solemn commitment to fight and, if necessary, to die, for our nation's defense,” he said. “We owe it to them to allow them to pursue every avenue of military service for which they are fully prepared and qualified. Their career success and their specific opportunities should be based solely on their ability to successfully carry out an assigned mission. Everyone deserves that chance.” The decision to lift the ban on women serving in combat presents a daunting challenge to top military leaders who now will have to decide which, if any, jobs they believe should be open only to men. Panetta planned to announce at a Pentagon news conference that more than 230,000 battlefront posts — many in Army and Marine infantry units and in potentially elite commando jobs — are now open to women. It will be up to the military service chiefs to recommend and defend whether women should be excluded from any of those more demanding and deadly positions, such as Navy commandos or the Army's Delta Force. The historic change, which was recommended by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, overturns a 1994 rule prohibiting women from being assigned to smaller ground combat units. The change will not take place overnight: Service chiefs will have to develop plans for allowing women to seek the combat positions, a senior military official said. Some jobs may open as soon as this year, while assessments for others, such as special operations forces, may take longer. The services will have until January 2016 to make a case to that some positions should remain closed to women. — AP
