Then, in 2013, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the ban on women in combat would be lifted entirely, and that female service members would be allowed to serve in direct ground combat roles. In 2015, this was put into action. This historic change opened up hundreds of thousands of jobs for women in the military and essentially ensured that as long as female service members completed the necessary training and requirements, they could now serve in almost any role in the U.S. Armed Forces.

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I thought we put this issue behind us more than a decade ago. Apparently not. Trump's nominee for Defense Secretary wants to reverse course. Below is what he said last week. To be fair to Hegseth, a Fox News Host, he surely had no idea when he spoke last week that anyone would consider nominating him to lead the U.S. military.

"I'm straight up just saying we shouldn't have women in combat roles. It hasn't made us more effective, it hasn't made us more lethal, it has made fighting more complicated," Hegseth said.

He added: "As the disclaimer for everybody out there, we've all served with women and they're great. It's just our institutions don't have to incentivize that in places where traditionally, not traditionally, over human history, men in those positions are more capable."

Before this, Hegseth had argued that his position was about maintaining the standards of military units.

He said: "You had women truck drivers...or mechanics on these convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then they'd be ambushed or hit by IUDs and suddenly you have women in combat - that's maybe a modern reality in a 360 battlefield, that's different than intentionally saying 'we're gonna put women into combat roles so they will do the combat roles of men,' knowing that we've changed the standards in putting them there, which means you've changed the capability of that unit.

"And if you say you haven't, you're a liar. Because everybody knows, between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different."

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