Armed Forces: The New Top Guns

By Julie Johnson/Washington

During the Persian Gulf war, women distinguished themselves in the cockpits of helicopters, midair refueling tankers and the lumbering C-141 transport jets that ferried troops across enemy lines. Their performance and that of all the 35,000 women who served in the gulf has generated support in Congress and public opinion for broadening the role of females in the military. Last week in a landmark move the Senate voted overwhelmingly to overturn a 43-year-old law that bars women from flying combat missions. Said Delaware Senator William Roth, who co-sponsored the amendment with Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts: "The facts show that women pilots have successively broken ground in just about every area of aviation -- and they deserve the opportunity to compete."

The new measure, which would allow but not require each of the services to certify women pilots for combat missions, won little support among the military brass. Said former Marine Commandant Robert H. Barrow: "Women give life. Sustain life. Nurture life. They don't take it." Despite such reservations, the Pentagon is likely to go along grudgingly with the policy.

Opponents of the measure, including Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had argued that a presidential study commission should precede any green light for women fighter pilots. Though they failed to preserve the aviation ban, adherents of this go-slow approach won support for a 15-member White House-named panel that would present a report to Congress next year on the feasibility of admitting women to a wide variety of combat jobs.

Supporters of the new policy argue that combat missions are an essential stepping-stone to promotions. While, for example, women account for 9.9% of the enlisted personnel and 10.5% of the officers in the Air Force, they are virtually absent at the senior-officer level. Of the service's 333 generals, only three are women. "The opponents talk about sex and toilets, but this fight is really about privilege and power," says military analyst and former Army Captain Carolyn H. Becraft.

Women are not unanimous in supporting the idea of females in combat. Even within the armed forces, combat lust is more widespread among female officers than enlisted servicewomen. "What we're seeing," says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, "is a push by female officers and civilian feminists." Moskos and others argue that introducing the notion of combat equality may sharply reduce the number of women who enlist and could cause problems in the future if the draft is ever reinstated.

Fears that the limited measure adopted last week will lead to a major battlefield role for women are probably exaggerated. "I really doubt that it will open the floodgates," says Martin Binkin, a Brookings Institution expert on women in combat. "I don't see a lot of women eager to go." But some women do want to do the job, and in an era in which high-technology blurs battle lines and brains may edge out brawn, there is no good reason to deny them the chance.