Everything was set for the Navy officer to take over a brand new position that might have capped an already distinguished profession— and made her the first lady in a Naval Special Warfare command overseeing Navy SEALs.
Ranked the high captain in her cohort, she obtained a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED assault throughout a fight tour in Iraq. She then turned the first lady to serve with SEAL Team Six in the position of troop commander, one of a number of senior positions inside the squadrons that make up the elite naval unit.
A proper ceremony marking her new place was deliberate for July. Invitations went out two months prematurely.
But simply two weeks earlier than the ceremony, her command was abruptly canceled with little rationalization, based on a number of sources acquainted with the scenario. The resolution didn’t come by formal channels however by a collection of telephone calls from the Pentagon, one of the sources stated. The circumstances have been uncommon and appeared designed to omit a paper path, based on a number of sources.
Under the Navy’s “up or out” coverage, with no command slot to take, the officer’s greater than two-decade military profession was successfully over.
As the information unfold by the tightknit world of Naval Special Warfare, a consensus started to type: The command was doubtless yanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as a result of of the officer’s gender.
The command she was set to take over is carefully aligned with recruiting for elite operations roles, together with the Navy SEALs — and the impression these in the Naval Special Warfare neighborhood bought from the Pentagon was that Hegseth didn’t need a lady fronting that position.
“They want to keep it the brotherhood and don’t like that she’s coming in and challenging the status quo,” stated a Navy particular operations supply acquainted with the scenario.
One protection official acquainted with the matter stated the change of plans was a outcome of broader concerns about whether or not the position was vital. A Pentagon official acquainted with the scenario stated the command was pulled as a result of the Navy captain wasn’t herself a SEAL, and that Hegseth was not concerned.
But a number of individuals acquainted with the dynamics of Navy personnel issues scoffed at these explanations. For one, the Navy doesn’t usually restructure instructions by axing an incoming commanding officer days earlier than they are set to take over. On high of that, a broad panel of the most elite Navy SEAL leaders chosen her for the new command.
“They can justify it by saying she’s not qualified because she’s not a SEAL,” stated one retired SEAL. “But the SEALs thought she was qualified.”
To this individual, the revoked command was a transparent symptom of Hegseth’s views about women in the military. He stated he believes the commander was eliminated as a result of Hegseth is sexist.
“I’m sure they would repeal the whole women in combat thing [if they could], but this is what they can do,” the retired SEAL added.
NCS is just not naming the feminine Navy captain, who didn’t reply to requests for remark. The Pentagon didn’t reply to particular questions from NCS about her scenario, together with what position, if any, Hegseth performed.
Her story encapsulates what many in the military now concern is a tradition of misogyny permeating the US armed forces underneath Hegseth. NCS spoke to greater than a dozen active-duty women throughout the military branches, all of whom expressed a deep and rising alarm that Hegseth’s actions, policies and rhetoric danger pushing out each skilled troopers and people serious about becoming a member of.
Several stated they knew of different feminine servicemembers who had just lately been handed over for deserved promotions. Others stated they are now contemplating leaving the military.
NCS requested the Pentagon about Hegseth’s views on women in the military, together with claims that women are contemplating leaving service and really feel they are not valued. The Pentagon responded saying women are “excited” to serve underneath the “strong leadership” of Hegseth and President Donald Trump and claimed military requirements “across the board have largely been ignored by leadership of the past.”
Active-duty women spoke to NCS for this story underneath the situation of anonymity for concern of reprisals for talking candidly. In some circumstances, pseudonyms are used to explain them. NCS additionally spoke to a number of senior male servicemembers in addition to a number of retired feminine servicemembers – some of whom have been reluctant to publicly criticize the administration over fears that their veterans’ advantages could possibly be taken away.
With Hegseth at the helm, many who spoke to NCS felt women are not needed in uniform— a doubtlessly seismic shift since they make up roughly 18% of the US military.
“To be quite honest, I am fearful for women in uniform right now,” stated Patti J. Tutalo, a retired Coast Guard commander who served on a decades-old advisory group for women in the military earlier than it was shut down this yr.
“I definitely think there will be a retention issue for women,” Tutalo added. “I also think that you’re going to see an increase in assaults, increase in harassment, increase in bullying, hazing, and I think there’ll be a lack of accountability for those things.”
Hegseth has already eliminated a number of women from distinguished management roles, together with firing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the highest-ranking officer in the US Navy and the first lady on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That presently leaves the US and not using a feminine four-star basic, the military’s highest rank.
Two years in the past, there have been 4.
He additionally scrapped the advisory panel Tutalo was half of: the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which advisable best practices to assist women in uniform together with securing correctly becoming physique armor and acceptable well being care.
And he’s vowed to remove the potential to file nameless whistleblower complaints, a key software for reporting allegations of sexual assault.
In a speech to generals in Quantico, Virginia, in September, Hegseth introduced his imaginative and prescient for rolling again policies geared toward selling variety or accommodating troops.
Among these have been health requirements that he claimed have been eased in recent times to make it attainable for women to serve in fight roles. In his speech, Hegseth vowed to implement health exams that might be judged to “the highest male standard.”
“If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” Hegseth stated.
But males and women alike who spoke to NCS stated that Hegseth’s claims are flatly false, and that bodily requirements are gender-neutral for fight positions — a sentiment that’s borne out by the experiences of quite a few women in fight roles.
For the Navy captain whose command orders have been revoked, she met each bodily normal, a number of sources acquainted with her {qualifications} stated. That included having the ability to carry out 25 lb weighted pull-ups.
According to a retired senior enlisted Navy SEAL who served along with her at SEAL Team Six, there was by no means any query about her {qualifications} for the position, significantly amid the debate of variety hires.
“She was the best man for the job. There is absolutely no DEI ,” the retired SEAL advised NCS, including that the captain spent her spare time competing in IRONMAN races.
She would have overseen bomb disposal technicians and divers along with Navy SEALs, three communities by which she had labored. “She’s a badass, and also extremely smart and capable,” the retired SEAL stated.
For Hailey Gibbons, an Army veteran who was amongst the first women to graduate from Ranger School after it was opened to women a decade in the past, the concept that women aren’t assembly the similar requirements as males is “laughable.” Her preliminary bodily check at Ranger School – a grueling two-month coaching course – was the similar as her male comrades, she stated: 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, and a five-mile run in underneath 40 minutes, plus six chin-ups.
Hegseth is making it okay for others in the military to say, “women can’t do this,” stated Gibbons, who served in the Army’s elite seventy fifth Ranger Regiment.
Another lady in the Army who spoke to NCS – an enlisted soldier in a fight arms unit – stated that she is already feeling real-life results of Hegseth’s September speech.
Following the secretary’s remarks, she stated a male noncommissioned officer in her unit advised her: “All you women are getting out now.”
“I want nothing to do with the military after this,” she stated.
In an announcement to NCS, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson stated women “are excited to serve under the strong leadership of Secretary Hegseth and President Trump.”
“Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman,” Wilson stated.
When NCS requested to be supplied present particular examples of requirements being lowered for women, the Pentagon didn’t present any.
The US military first opened fight roles to women throughout the Obama administration. When then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter introduced the change in 2015, Kate was elated.
For Kate, a pseudonym NCS is utilizing to guard her id, the announcement meant having the ability to proceed a household legacy. She had grown up desirous to observe in her father’s footsteps and serve in the Marines, the final department to formally combine women into fight roles. She headed to Marines fundamental coaching in 2017, completed with some of the highest health marks after boot camp and listed a fight position as her first alternative.
“I was really proud to be part of that first wave of women serving in a combat arms job,” stated Kate, now a Marine Corps officer.
When she underwent specialised coaching for her job, Kate was the solely lady in the group. And “everything was the same” for her because it was for males, she stated, together with finishing 6-mile swims in tough shores and going for weeks and not using a bathe.
And in some methods, it felt more durable, Kate stated, as a result of she was made to really feel unwelcome.
“They didn’t treat me special,” she stated. “They treated me worse. I had a target on my back, and I was always looked at as not like everybody else.”
After Kate was promoted to a commander, she requested the officer she was changing how his Marines felt about her.
“He said they were absolutely distraught and upset,” Kate stated. He advised her: “They’re not excited about it at all, and they don’t want a female platoon commander.”
“It was an uphill battle from the start. I wasn’t welcomed, and I wasn’t wanted there,” Kate stated. “I had to go above and beyond the standard because I had way stricter eyeballs on me than a lot of my male counterparts.”
Hegseth’s views on women have been well-known earlier than he took over the Pentagon. He repeatedly denigrated women in military management, for instance calling Franchetti, the admiral he fired earlier this yr, a “DEI hire” in his 2024 e book on military tradition, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”
“The gender integration of the military is a huge part of our modern confusion about the goals of war,” Hegseth wrote. And: “[W]e need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”
Those views towards women are significantly standard amongst many in the particular operations neighborhood, a number of feminine servicemembers stated.
“A lot of people in special operations like [Hegseth] because he’s getting back to a place where physical toughness is the most important thing,” stated the Navy particular operations supply. “But I think they’re missing the bigger picture. They don’t need a SEAL to do every job.”
Women in different branches stated the providers had develop into a extra welcoming place in recent times, however many are now questioning if coverage adjustments are reversing that pattern.
They feared that Hegseth’s remarks and deeds might embolden extra mistreatment of women from commanders all through the ranks.
One lady, an skilled Air Force officer whom NCS is referring to as Anne, has served with specialised items and deployed on a number of fight excursions.
She loves her work and is proud of her service, however these days, Hegseth’s rhetoric “has impacted how I see myself in the military,” Anne stated.
It is tough to not really feel scrutinized, she stated, pointing out that “almost every woman I know in the military has deleted their social media presence.”
Smaller adjustments clearly geared toward women are additionally demoralizing colleagues she is aware of, Anne stated. She pointed to new grooming requirements that additional prohibit the muted colours of nail polish women can put on, and ban false eyelashes.
“For women, getting your nails done was just a small way to relax and still, within regulations, be able to have something that looked both professional and made them feel confident,” Anne stated.
Kate, the Marine Corps officer, who’s Black, stated the new grooming laws requiring women to gel again child hairs and for all males to be clean-shaven unfairly goal individuals of coloration, significantly Black males who disproportionately suffer from a skin condition that causes painful razor bumps and scarring. She and others questioned how these new guidelines enhance power readiness.
Anne and different feminine servicemembers who spoke to NCS stated they are significantly involved that policies Hegseth has vowed to enact might make the military a harmful place.
Hegseth railed in opposition to nameless and repeat complaints to the military’s equal alternative and inspector basic places of work, vowing to remove a software that enables troopers and protection personnel to file whistleblower complaints, report management or level out discrimination.
Many of the women who spoke to NCS voiced issues that nameless reporting of sexual assault could possibly be impacted. Anonymous complaints for sexual assault – known as restricted reviews – made up over a 3rd of sexual assault reviews in the military in fiscal yr 2024. Without an avenue for a servicemember to make them, a number of women stated, males and women alike might resolve to not report in any respect.
Though it’s unclear when this alteration to the reporting course of will happen, women who spoke to NCS stated the mechanisms to analyze misconduct inside the military are already flawed, and Hegseth’s new edict would make issues worse.
Adding extra sophisticated reporting programs and combined messaging dangers discouraging troopers from reporting sexual assaults and harassment, stated Anne.
“Women might get the idea, ‘Maybe it’s not that bad, maybe no one’s going to take me seriously,’” she stated, referring to potential reasoning to decrease what could possibly be critical transgressions. “All of those barriers come back, and we have tried very hard to get rid of those barriers.”
A veteran-turned-Defense Department civilian who NCS is figuring out as Mary, a pseudonym, stated that becoming a member of the armed forces 20 years in the past was “the best thing” she’s ever executed.
But now, regardless of her teenage daughter’s participation in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, Mary stated she wouldn’t need her baby to hitch.
“I do not feel confident that there is a new era and a new generation of leaders who are going to make a significant cultural change, where she will not be subjected to sexism or sexual harassment or even potential for sexual assault,” Mary stated.
In current months, the Pentagon has hailed recruitment of women as a brilliant spot: According to the Defense Department, almost 24,000 women shipped to fundamental coaching enlisted in the 2025 fiscal yr to August —up from 16,700 the previous year. But many of these women would have really signed as much as serve six months to a yr earlier than that, placing them as having joined in 2024, defined Ky Hunter, PhD, a Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
That means the impacts of the present policies and rhetoric on recruitment will not be totally recognized till this time subsequent yr, Hunter added.
Several active-duty women who spoke to NCS stated they concern that the present tradition shift and rhetoric might have an outsized affect on the recruitment of younger women to the military properly into the future.
“Women are going to feel that they don’t have a place in the military anymore,” Hunter stated.
The messaging is “causing people to have question marks around women in the Army” and this might begin to present up in declining recruitment numbers in the subsequent six to 12 months, stated former Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, the first lady to carry the title.
Purely by the numbers, each Hunter and Wormuth stated, the military wants women to perform, significantly as the US braces for potential future conflicts and fight roles change with the rise of technological warfare.
While some women advised NCS they really feel women are getting pushed out by this administration, others stated they now really feel extra compelled to remain and enhance issues.
“I wrestle with it,” stated one Army officer with greater than 10 years of service. “Part of me doesn’t want to leave, because if I do, who will take my place?”
For the Navy captain whose change of command was canceled she’s now unexpectedly winding down a trailblazing profession in the Navy.
It makes her former SEAL Team Six teammate livid.
“It’s f**kin’ bullshit. That’s horse shit,” the former senior enlisted SEAL stated.
He voted for and helps Trump, however says he thinks Secretary Hegseth’s private views are blinding him from retaining apparent expertise at the expense of some of the military’s most elite warfighters.
“I think my job is to protect women and children but occasionally there’s badass [women] out there, and we should capitalize and not limit ourselves,” he stated.
The Navy particular operations supply acquainted with the matter lamented that one of the captain’s passions had been recruiting women to particular operations roles. Now pulling the lady’s command might lower off entry for different feminine servicemembers, the individual stated.
“It pisses me off because it is clearly someone who is capable and has done extraordinary things and is being punished because of — and I hate that I have to say it this way — weak-ass men,” they stated.
NCS’s Andrew Seger and Nicky Robertson contributed to this report