Integrating Female Marines Into Combat Roles

The Marine Corps solicits volunteers to test ways of integrating female Marines into combat roles. The human research experiment will involve 460 Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C. A quarter of them will be women. Over the course of a year, they'll train for combat and mountain warfighting in simulated battle environments. Brig. Gen. George Smith says the Corps needs to test female performance beyond entry-level tasks. The Pentagon has ordered services to let women serve in combat by 2016.