Odierno: Army to open most field artillery jobs to women

Posted 2015-08-04 13:00 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

The Army plans to open to women all but one field artillery MOS, the service’s top officer said Monday.

With the exception of the 13F military occupational specialty, “we have decided … we are not going to ask for a waiver to keep it closed,” said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno.

This decision, which opens up MOSs such as cannon crewmember (13B) and field artillery automated tactical data system specialist (13D), comes just weeks after the Army opened the combat engineer (12B) MOS to women.

It also follows a decision from more than a year ago to open all field artillery officer positions to women.

A decision about the 13F, or fire support specialist, MOS will be made when the Army makes a decision about whether to open the infantry and armor specialties to women, Odierno said.

“We’re going to do that with infantry and armor because they’re embedded with infantry and armor units,” Odierno said.

These changes are the latest in an ongoing campaign to eliminate the Direct Ground Combat Assignment Rule by dismantling, in phases, policies that have barred women from serving in combat units below the brigade level.

The campaign began in 2012 when the Army opened 13,000 positions previously closed to women; the goal is to open most positions to women by the end of 2015.

Since 2012, the Army has conducted extensive tests as it tried to determine which MOSs should be opened to women and how it should be done.

“We’ve done a lot of pilot programs, we’ve done a lot of physical testing, we’ve done a lot of testing on how we integrate women into units, and those are all going well,” Odierno said. “We want the best person, if they’re qualified and meet the standards, we want to give them the opportunity to do whatever they want.”

Source: Army Times