Warning. What Im saying wasnt something I wanted to say, or could say, in just a few words, and what I say will probably run counter to some assumptions. The point of this post is contribute in some small way to reframing the debate about women in the military, and hopefully that framing will provide room for all sides of the current debate to participate in finding new ways forward. So please read, please comment, and please disagree. I hope this is productive, thanks for your time.

I think that one of the reasons that this issue has become so devisive is that we have divided our choices into a false dichotomy. We have trapped ourselves into thinking that we either have to keep women out of direct combat or we have to integrate them into our dominately male combat forces. This is the wrong way of looking at things, and both options would lead us to making the wrong choice.

Our ground force make up no longer includes anything close to real light infantry, excluding some special forces. Many women can not do the physical task we expect of our soldiers, not because of any inherent problem with women, but because our doctrines and load outs where not designed for them. Some women already in, or interested in joining, our military are exceptions to this rule, but not so many to provide enough value as to risk sacrificing unit cohesion, esprit de corps or our military's einheit, or unity in purpose. All of these other things are far more important to national security than gender politics, and policy should always be geared to building them up. Breaking them down is not a viable option.

Our military is tasked with a terrible purpose, but a neccessary and a noble one. If decisions are to be made about our military, the question of whether or not women should be allowed to serve is irrelevant. That is not to say that there aren't very capable women at our countries disposal, and that is not to say there aren't very good reasons for women to be allowed to contribute to our military. Many do already. But as long as women want to serve, and so long as service is neccessary, this issue isn't going to go away. The question that now needs to be asked is how can women make our armed forces stronger. This question can't be answered in pretty platitudes, it will need to be answered in tangible results that can be felt on the tactical, operational, and strategic levels.

Regarding our conventional forces, defense reformers have long lamented about how our military is becoming increasing driven by hardware rather than people. In some areas, such as strapping on a fighter plane (research drones more if you think they make this irrelevant), women have proven themselves capable combatants. This is not only evidence of women's mental, emotional, and even physical capability on the modern battlefield, it is also evidence that women can succeed at jobs that are right for them. The predilection towards high tech, and heavy, hardware in regards to ground combat on the other hand has made things like pulling a wounded comrade to safety, by his pack while in your own kit, the proverbial bridge too far for many (if not most) women.

The dreams of instant across the board defense reform notwithstanding, the institutional momentum towards more hardware (in which lighter gear just makes room for more gear) simply makes our current conventional forces paradigm the wrong place to include women. There are also, for better or worse, cultural factors that present obstacles, ones that are easy to dimiss only if your dismissive of the stakes involved (and keep in mind that setting gender integration up to fail, or forcing the issue, is only likely to reinforce those cultural factors). So, how do we break with the dichotomy? What shall we do?

One option is to set up new units, made up of either women or a mix of women and male volunteers. This would allow for those that think women serving within the current paradigm is the way to go an opportunity to prove as much while creating little risk for the bulk of our forces. If you've been paying attention, you'll know that this is not the way I think we should go, and you'll know why. Another option is to wait until our combat forces have taken a form more conducive to integration. This would not be my choice, and I don't think its politically feasible anyways. Waiting for the military to change might mean waiting forever, and it would mean passing up on an opportunity to test reform strategies while testing women at the front.

The winds of change in Washington are blowing in the direction of women in combat, but the way thats been proposed is too risky if not plain doomed to failure. Despite notable successes, the defense reform movement just can't compete with the politics, profits, and promotions promised by the status quo. The desire to let women serve can give defense reform the political pressure that it so desperately needs, and alternative ways of thinking about defense could give gender integration a chance of actually working.

In WWII, women snipers were an ace in the whole for Russia. While Hitler (against the advice of his less sycophantic generals) threw bad after good at Stalingrad, female snipers equiped with little more than warm clothes, and rifles, and excellent training either kept German heads down or put holes in thier cold helmets. Even in modern Eastern European colfitcs, the aim of the fabled White Widows has put fear in the hearts of even the most macho of men. Here in America, our gun culture means we have many young women already able to hit targets down range, and many more who would gladly grow up to be.

The sniper is an ideal fit for women soldiers, and while female sharpshooters could be folded into current units with less trouble than some other unit types, for the women, our Special Forces have been run ragged as of late and they dont need any more stressors. Creating female sniper units would allow for great team building, and could allow women to be trained and equipped in a way that would work best for them. This could then lead to more female or mixed special forces, and these forces would be the model for more units, the kind in which new recruits would serve.

The eventual goal would be to provide a decentralized mixed gender (possibly with segregated male and female units if not truly integender) light infantry force based upon concepts of maneuver and initiative rather than top down wars of attrition. These troops would own the ground. Big bases would seem foreign to them. They would be highly deployable, and would value operational momentum over top speed.

Body armor can't stop most IEDs (although it can keep people off the KIA list which is good for the news so long as you don't mind our soldiers being maimed and broken), so maneuver will be the best defense. Agile light infantry is hard to choke into a trap, and harder to keep in one. Plus they can chase down attackers. So can a heavy armored truck, but their lack of mobility makes them too big a target. Eventually, this force can be supported by its own integrated support systems based on reform ideas, think the Super Tacano and A-10 over the F-35 and the M113 over the Stryker and M1. Best of all, these affordable women friendly units will keep male only forces in play, which will be a major strong point if we have to fight in any area where the people will be either more motivated to fight women, or less motivated to work with them.

To get this right will take a lot of outside of the box thinking (and we need more thinking, period), but it could be done for much less than the way we do things already. In today's budget, that would be seen as low risk. There would be risk to those taking part in this experiment, but the risk to reward ratio would be much better than turning our entire military into an experiment, one that only leads our commanders that much farther down the path of playing politics.

Its important that people who support women being able to serve in frontline combat to realize that this is a matter of grand strategic implications. Its not just a matter of gender politics. Those against the inevitability of women fighting in the trenches are themselves doing nothing but making it so that when women do serve in combat, they will do so in a way that won't make us stronger, as they themselves are predicting. Both sides of this issue have something to teach us, but both are to stubborn to learn. We will be a weaker nation because of it.

Edited for typos.