Smooth transition to women on subs

Inexorably, with careful planning and a pragmatic eye, the Navy is going about the plan it announced in 2010 to integrate women into the submarine force. The service will be better for it.

The submarine force trailed far behind the rest of the U.S. Navy when it came to assimilating women into service. Under a pilot program, women began serving on surface ships in the early 1970s and by the end of that decade were an official part of the surface force. In 1980, the first class of women graduated from the Naval Academy.

Yet submarines remained a male-only dominion. The tighter quarters in submarines, the fact they patrol submerged for months at a time, and the physical demands of submarine service were all cited as reasons to continue the ban on women.

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