TWO WOMEN ADVANCE FURTHER IN NAVY SEAL TRYOUTS THAN EVER

Two women attempting to become Navy SEALs have advanced further through the military’s grueling training pipeline than any women before them. An enlisted sailor and a naval officer both made it to the third week of the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course before leaving the program.

The candidates, whose names are being withheld for privacy and security reasons, entered the six-month training at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado in California. CBS News reported that the officer was rolled back to the next class and requested to drop out before the infamous Hell Week. The enlisted sailor was medically pulled from the course during Hell Week.

Hell Week begins in the fourth week of training and acts as a punishing endurance test. Candidates get about four hours of sleep over five days while carrying logs, lying in cold ocean water, launching boats into crashing waves, and running around 200 miles. Hope Hodge Seck, an investigative journalist for Military Times, told NewsNation that the early training tasks are arduous and intellectually taxing.

Making it to the third week is a massive hurdle. Navy data spanning 1998 to 2023 shows about 45 percent of candidates are removed or rolled back in the weeks before Hell Week even begins. NewsNation reported that out of more than 8,000 people who attempt the course, only about 250 ultimately qualify as SEALs.

The Pentagon opened special-operations roles to women in 2016. While no woman has become a Navy SEAL, others have navigated rigorous special operations pipelines. In 2021, a sailor became the first woman to graduate as a Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewman, operating high-speed boats that transport SEALs into and out of hostile territory.

Despite these milestones, women face ongoing resistance from some in the military community. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth questioned whether women should serve in special-operations roles during a podcast interview and his confirmation hearing, arguing that physical standards had changed.

Former Army Capt. Hailey Gibbons, who completed Ranger School in 2021, pushed back on those claims. “When he’s saying that the standards have changed and that people have lowered standards to allow women into their formations, it’s absolutely a lie because no brigade commander would sign off on that — because then they would be looked at as less than and as someone who they can’t trust,” Gibbons said in an interview with CBS News.