Women have been given access to any front-line combat position in the United States military. Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced on December 3 that the U.S. military would open all positions to women. “There will be no exceptions,” said Carter at a news conference. He added:

They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat. They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy seals, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men.

The decision overruled Marine Corps objections for its continued exclusion of women in certain front-line positions. Gen. Joseph E. Dunford Jr., the former commandant of the Marine Corps, argued that months of testing revealed mixed-gender units were not as capable as all-male units.

With Carter’s announcement, the Marine Corps will now operate under the same rulings as the rest of the military. “We are a joint force, and I have decided to make a decision which applies to the entire force,” said Carter.

Critics of previous expansions of female military participation pointed to the lowering of minimum fitness requirements for female recruits in the Marine Corps. Carter noted, “As long as they qualify and meet the standards, women will be able to contribute to our mission in ways they could not before.”

Trumpet managing editor Joel Hilliker wrote about this gender-equal combat in 2013 when the U.S. military opened up around 230,000 positions in combat roles to women:

A traditional-thinking male seeks to protect a woman. An honorable man shields a female from danger and hurt. … And within a gender-integrated theater of combat, it introduces a host of complications. A leader is expected to view that woman not as a woman, but simply as a soldier—a grunt whom he must be able to send into harm’s way. In the up-is-down moral climate of today’s military, his reluctance to pitch her into the lion’s den is chauvinistic and sexist!

To learn what the implications of this decision really are, read the rest of Joel Hilliker’s article “America Thrusts Wives and Moms Into Combat.”