Air Force Accused of Lowering Standards for Elite Unit to Accommodate Female Candidate

The U.S. Air Force acknowledged it changed the “norms” on how a candidate advances through its elite Special Tactics training pipeline after an anonymous service member accused the military branch of making special accommodations to advance a female trainee who failed to meet the program’s rigorous physical standards.

Typically a candidate who quits the training program is reassigned to his or her previous duty, but that wasn’t the case with a female candidate who was kept in the program even after repeatedly quitting and failing to meet its physical standards, according to a Memo published anonymously Wednesday morning and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Advancing a candidate who quit the program violated the Special Tactics community’s “societal norms,” the memo states.

Lt. Gen. Jim Slife, who heads the Air Force Special Operations Command, responded by acknowledging that “norms” have indeed changed. “How we bring trainees through the pipeline today is different than the way we brought them through the pipeline 15 years ago,” Slife said, “because our understanding of the best way to get trainees to meet these standards by the time they join the operational force has evolved. It will continue to do so.”

The admission comes years after Obama administration defense secretary Ash Carter opened all combat roles to women in 2015. That decision led to concerns from special operations forces and Republican lawmakers that integrating women into demanding combat jobs would lead to lower standards and diminished effectiveness. Members of the military familiar with the creation of the memo and corresponding effort to blow the whistle on declining standards for the Air Force’s elite unit said the criticism is not about keeping women from advancement. – READ MORE