US Navy to Lift Ban on Women Serving Aboard Subs

(Feb. 24) -- The military isn't asking, it's telling.

In a letter to Congress last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates notified lawmakers that women will be allowed to serve on submarines for the first time in the Navy's 110-year history, ABC News reported. Congress has 30 days to pass a law to stop or delay the policy, but if it remains silent, women could be aboard Navy submarines in 18 months.

The lifting of the ban removes one of the last glass ceilings for women in the military.

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Unless Congress steps in, women could be serving on Navy submarines for the first time in the service's history in about 18 months.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus told ABC on Tuesday that allowing women to serve on subs is "a great idea and the right thing to do."

Women have been assigned to surface ships for the past 17 years but were kept off subs in fear that the small space would create challenges. For years, the Navy said it was too expensive to refit submarines with separate living quarters so women could serve.

Tracy Moran, a columnist for USA Today, said the Navy should wait to repeal the ban until its ships were ready to accommodate them. "Allowing female officers to serve on the boomers, as the panel recommended, would be a mistake at this point," she wrote. "Instead, let the Navy first develop vessels that can accommodate co-ed crews, and let them develop a career path for women. This may take many years, but doing it correctly will be worth the wait."

But Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, a Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the Navy was moving forward anyway.

"The DoD's decision to allow women to serve on submarines will present challenges, but these challenges should not be insurmountable for the Navy," he told The Navy Times.

Debrah McFarlane of the site Veterans Today agreed. "It is about time," she wrote today. "If a female is good enough to dock and maintain submarines, she should have the privilege and the right to serve on the darn thing."

McFarlane said "Though one of the long used excuse[s] for women not serving on submarines has to do with accommodations, it is an excuse that is just that, 'an excuse.'"

Congress looks unlikely to stop the new policy, the Los Angeles Times reports, citing congressional officials. Lawmakers
who might oppose the lifting of the ban are probably too busy fighting the repeal of the "don't ask don't tell" ban on gays in the military to shift their focus, the paper said.

Now, eyes are on Congress. L.A. Times blogger Andrew Malcolm offered an acerbic observation: "Now that the Navy has made its command military decision to broaden seaborne career opportunities for females, land-based Congress, which itself has woefully few career women, has 30 days -- no, make that 28 now -- to interfere," he said.