KINGS BAY NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE, Ga. — The first U.S. women allowed to serve aboard submarines will be reporting for duty by 2012, the Navy said Thursday as the military ordered an end to one of its few remaining gender barriers.
The cramped quarters and scant privacy aboard submarines, combined with long tours of up to 90 days at sea, kept them off-limits to female sailors even after the Navy began allowing women to serve on all its surface ships in 1994.
There were some protests, particularly from wives of sub sailors, after the military began formulating a plan last fall. But it received no objections from Congress after Defense Secretary Robert Gates notified lawmakers in mid-February that the Navy intended to lift the ban. The deadline for Congress to intervene passed Wednesday.
The first group of women will consist entirely of officers assigned to guided-missile attack submarines and ballistic-missile submarines, which have the most living space in the Navy’s fleet.
