Women will be permitted to serve in the most intense and physically hazardous combat positions in the military, including the Navy SEALs, the Army Rangers and the Marine infantry, senior defense officials said Monday.
Leaders of each service branch are expected to make public at the Pentagon on Tuesday their plans for how they will integrate women into the units without reducing rigorous standards.
Although Leon E. Panetta announced in January in one of his last decisions as defense secretary that he was lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, he did not specify which of the hundreds of thousands of front-line combat positions might be open to them.
The plans to be released on Tuesday under Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel indicate for the first time that the military is prepared to integrate women into the most elite combat units, like the SEALs, who carried out the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
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