If confirmed by the Senate, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon could mean upheaval for the careers of thousands of women serving in the military.

Pete Hegseth, a now-former Fox News personality, stunned Washington as Trump's pick for secretary of defense. With seemingly no experience in defense policy and a modest military career -- 13 years as a part-timer in the National Guard^[1], culminating in the mid-level rank of major -- Hegseth's nomination raised eyebrows across the defense establishment.

It's unclear how Hegseth would lead the Defense Department, the largest federal department and among the world's largest bureaucracies. But he has made clear, in his own words, that he is critical of military service by women and more specifically opposes female troops serving in combat roles.

Read Next: Marine Corps Codifies Amphibious Combat Vehicle Standards After Rocky Start, New Deployments^[2]

"It hasn't made us more effective, hasn't made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated," Hegseth said on an appearance on "The Shawn Ryan Show" earlier this month.

On that show, he told the host that he was "straight-up saying we should not have women in combat roles."

He shared similar sentiments in his book published in June saying, "Women are life givers, regardless of what the abortion industry might want us to think." A spokeswoman for Fox News told Military.com on Monday that Hegseth no longer works for the network.

Currently, around 3,800 women are serving in frontline Army^[3] combat roles across infantry, cavalry, armor and field artillery roles, according to service data reviewed by Military.com. The data includes active duty, reserve and National Guard, and encompasses enlisted and officers.

Among them, fewer than 10 female Green Berets^[4] serve in the Army's most elite units, according to multiple defense officials with direct knowledge. At least one of those women is transgender. Additionally, one woman is currently advancing through the rigorous Special Forces^[5] training pipeline, signaling a gradual but significant shift in the makeup of the Army's combat forces.

Meanwhile, 151 women have graduated from the Army's legendary Ranger school, a grueling 61-day combat leadership course.

In the Marine Corps, nearly 700 women are serving in combat roles, including 112 female infantry riflemen and 15 Marine officers. Since fiscal 2018, the number of Marine women in combat roles has more than tripled for enlisted and increased sixfold for officers.

Removing those women from combat arms roles could trigger a major crisis within the military, forcing thousands to transition into other career fields. Such a shift would also cause significant logistical challenges, including whether enough vacancies in other roles would even exist.

Additionally, the Pentagon could face enormous costs associated with retraining those women, further straining already tight defense budgets and potentially disrupting overall force readiness. Some of those women could be forced out of the military altogether, and it could also have a chilling effect, setting women back years in military hierarchies after rapidly expanding their footprint in recent years.

Hegseth dedicates a significant portion of his recently published book to criticizing the inclusion of women in combat roles, strongly insinuating -- without offering evidence -- that they benefit from preferential treatment.

In certain cases, he claimed women are unfairly lauded as war heroes. Specifically, Hegseth cites several instances in which women have been awarded medals for valor, saying one woman who earned a Silver Star -- one of the top recognitions for combat bravery -- was swiftly awarded because there was "an agenda."

"They don't care how many battles we lose as long as our dead are diverse," he wrote, though it's unclear who he was referring to. "We can see this in how the woke PR machine has spun stories of female service members."

Hegseth has also pointed to anecdotal claims from a male friend, who alleged being wrongly accused of sexual assault or harassment by two women in an Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program during his time teaching at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. Details about any investigation or whether the accusations were substantiated remain unclear.

"He soon realized the biggest danger to his career was female cadets at ROTC^[6]," Hegseth wrote about his friend.

An investigation by Military.com^[7] found insufficient oversight over ROTC programs has allowed senior officials to misuse their positions. Allegations include sexual advances, harassment and assault of young women in the program, many of whom face limited avenues to report such abuse.

In that same book, Hegseth claimed that Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the top Navy officer and the first woman to hold the post, was unqualified for the job and was chosen for the role because “politics is all about optics instead of results.”

“Naval operations being weakened won’t matter to anyone,” he added.

The Integration of Women

The exclusion of women in direct ground combat roles was lifted little more than a decade ago by the Pentagon, and the full integration into all military roles came in 2016. The decisions generated some friction and incidents, particularly in the Navy^[8], in the beginning.

Despite the critical roles of Female Engagement and Lioness Teams during the Global War on Terrorism -- which put women at the front lines to adapt to the cultural gender differences in Iraq and Afghanistan -- the Marine Corps has been historically the most reluctant service to officially accept women in combat roles and integrate them forcewide.

After former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta moved to lift the ban on women in direct ground combat in 2013, the Corps was the only branch to request an exception, which was rejected. In 2015, the Marine Corps issued a four-page summary of findings from an experiment that assessed the performance of all-male and gender-integrated volunteer control groups during infantry tasks.

The summary reported that mixed units in the study performed slower, were less accurate during shooting tasks and that women in those groups sustained more injuries than their male counterparts. However, the full study said that the mixed-control groups succeeded in complex tasks and did not reflect changes in morale, The New York Times reported^[9] in 2015.

The study was also panned by critics^[10] as having methodological flaws, to include not having clear standards set in place, experience gaps between the male and female Marines volunteering for the experiment, failing to adequately assess if individual female Marines were up to the task, rather than the collective group measurement, and -- according to one top official at the time -- institutional bias.

"It started out with a fairly large component of the men thinking this is not a good idea and women will never be able to do this," then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said of the Marine Corps' study on NPR. "When you start out with that mindset, you almost presuppose the outcome."

Meanwhile, the Navy, which is structured and operates differently from the two land warfare branches, considers its submarine service -- which is all volunteer and, until 2010, all male -- to be akin to a combat role.

There are currently 730 women serving in the submarine force, according to Navy officials.

The Navy integration efforts, which began in 2010, were marred four years in by a scandal that involved nearly a dozen sailors secretly recording^[11] their female shipmates while they showered. Then, in 2019, sailors aboard the USS Florida were investigated and punished over allegations of a "rape list"^[12] of female sailors stationed aboard the submarine.

However, the service has also managed to cultivate a cadre of female sailors who have not only risen through the ranks of the submarine service but have begun to take leadership roles. Two years ago, the Navy announced that a female sailor^[13], one of the first to serve on submarines, was named as the USS Louisiana's top enlisted official. The same year, the Navy also tapped a female officer to serve as the first executive officer^[14] of a submarine.

Navy officials say they plan to expand the number of subs with women aboard from 54 boats up to 61 by 2033, and new submarines, like the recently commissioned USS New Jersey, are being built with integration in mind.

The Navy has also opened Naval Special Warfare roles to women, including special warfare combat crewmen and SEALs, but a Navy official confirmed to Military.com that while women have attempted the rigorous training needed to qualify for those positions, none has succeeded to date.

Combat Roles as Career Path

Rising to the top ranks of the Army or Marine Corps has often depended on experience in combat arms -- a career path that remains critical for those aiming for the service's most powerful positions.

For example, every Army chief of staff, the four-star general who oversees the force, has come from a combat arms background since the position was formalized in 1840, and no woman has yet ascended to the position. The same pattern holds for the sergeant major of the Army, the highest-ranking enlisted soldier who advises both the service chief and the Army secretary, a civilian position. Here, too, the position has always been for those with combat arms experience, including infantry, cavalry, artillery and Special Forces backgrounds.

Meanwhile, women's involvement in combat operations extends far beyond the specific roles they are now allowed to fill.

When the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all military jobs to women in 2016, it was estimated that approximately 10% of military positions -- around 220,000 jobs -- had previously been closed to women. Those restrictions included not only direct combat units but also vital support roles in frontline units, effectively limiting women's participation in some of the most pivotal positions within the military.

The lifting of all remaining exclusions to women in 2016 was somewhat of a formality, reflecting what had already been happening on the ground for years. Women had long been fighting -- and dying -- alongside their male counterparts, particularly in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where the absence of clear frontlines meant that even traditionally non-combat units often found themselves in the middle of intense firefights.

"Women have fought and died in every U.S. conflict since the American Revolution," Emelie Vanasse, a former Army infantry officer and one of the first women to pass the service's grueling Ranger School Course, told Military.com on Monday. "Our combat service is not new; ending the ground combat exclusion policy was merely a recognition and a continuation of years of dedication to the defense of our nation."

No Recruiting Slump Among Women

As Hegseth's nomination threatens to reignite a debate over female troops, women appear ready and willing to serve.

The larger branches of the military -- particularly the Army -- have struggled with a persistent recruiting slump in recent years. A review of internal Army data^[15] by Military.com revealed that much of this decline stems from young men, who are disproportionately less qualified to enlist compared to young women.

"There's a narrative that this was some sort of feminist movement, and it's in some ways hurting readiness," said Katherine Kuzminski, who studies military personnel issues at the Center for a New American Security. "In reality, we've had a challenging recruiting environment. Women are more likely to graduate high school or have a GED; they're outperforming young men cognitively.

"We've seen real growth in young women in sports, and so the ratios of physically fit young women versus young men we see shifting in favor of young women," she said.

Female recruitment^[16] in the Army has remained steady since 2013, with an average of about 10,000 women enlisting annually. In contrast, male enlistments have seen a sharp decline, dropping 35% over the same period -- from 58,000 in 2013 to just 37,700 in 2023.

Overall, only about a quarter of young Americans are eligible to serve, due largely to rising obesity rates and an inability to meet the military's academic entrance standards. Boys have been falling behind girls^[17] on test scores for years.

"It has nothing to do with being 'woke.' I truly believe the best, most qualified person should get the job -- in a ruthless profession where people's lives are on the line, that matters even more," Vanasse said. "If you exclude women from combat positions, you exclude an entirely capable, qualified population. You weaken the lethality of the military."

Editors note: This article was updated with the information that Hegseth no longer works for Fox News.

Related: 'He's Going to Have to Explain It': Surprise Defense Secretary Pick's History Takes Center Stage^[18]

The military branches -- especially the Navy^[1] -- have been quietly integrating and becoming more dependent on satellite internet from SpaceX and Starlink while, at the same time, media reports have revealed that the man running both companies, Elon Musk, shares a cozy relationship with one of America's biggest adversaries.

In the past year, U.S. news^[2] outlets have^[3] reported that Musk^[4], who oversees the satellite internet provider, has not only developed a close relationship with Vladimir Putin but has also acquiesced to his requests to shut off the service for Ukrainians at key moments of the war and is providing Starlink access to Russians.

Amid the reports, officials in the Pentagon and the services have refused to meaningfully engage with questions about Musk's relationship with the Defense Department or just how widespread Starlink technology has become among the force. But two top senators are urging an investigation of Musk, his Pentagon ties, and his communications with Moscow.

Read Next: Hegseth, Nominee for Defense Secretary, Faced a Sexual Assault Allegation During 2017 Police Call^[5]

On Friday, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., a senior member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, called on both the Pentagon and the Justice Department to investigate Musk^[6].

"We urgently call upon the U.S. government to open an investigation ... to determine whether this behavior should force a review of Mr. Musk's continued involvement in SpaceX's varying contracts with the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community," the pair wrote in a letter to the U.S. attorney general and inspector general of the Defense Department.

In a separate letter^[7] to the head of the Air Force^[8], the pair added that "Mr. Musk's reported behavior could pose serious risks to national security, and as CEO of a company with billions of dollars in sensitive defense and intelligence contracts, warrant reconsideration of SpaceX's outsized role in DoD's commercial space integration."

Helping Troops Connect

The Navy has been the most public about its use of Starlink. The commander of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters that the service was an important way to keep morale up on the ship, which recently returned from a nine-month deployment^[9] to the Middle East.

Capt. Chris "Chowdah" Hill told attendees at a Military Reporters and Editors conference that the service "really helped people connect with their external support network in ways that we've never seen before."

Other experts like Brad Martin, a former Navy captain turned senior researcher at the Rand Corp. think tank, told Military.com that the service is also helpful because "there are administrative uses."

The extra bandwidth allows ships to more easily order parts, file paperwork and conduct a variety of other administrative tasks that are considered a lower priority for the main communications channels on a warship, Martin explained.

However, given that Starlink is not owned or operated by the U.S. government, both Martin and Hill say that there are security risks involved. Assessing just how significant those risks are is hard since the services are not interested in sharing how widespread Starlink has become.

Military.com reached out to the Navy and asked for the total number of ships that are running either Starlink or Starshield -- the military version of the satellite service -- but the sea service didn't answer the question, despite some of its officers talking about it to the media.

In his remarks to reporters, Hill said that "a couple" of ships have tried some version of the service, while a Navy spokesperson said that "the Navy has installed Starlink systems on various ships across the fleet."

In addition to the Eisenhower, a 2023 news release said^[10] the Navy's newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, had a system too.

The USS Manchester, a littoral combat ship^[11], also apparently had a similar system installed this summer, according to a Navy investigation into a Starlink system^[12] that sailors aboard the ship had set up without permission from superiors.

Four months after the illegal Starlink system was set up, the ship was slated to have the Starshield system installed, which led one sailor to tell the ship's operations officer that "the Starshield installers may find something that shouldn't be there."

In September, the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, or NAVWAR, said that its "goal is to eventually have [satellite-powered internet] available on all Navy ships."

And the Navy isn't alone.

The Marine Corps^[13] confirmed to Military.com that it has been using "a ruggedized version of the Starshield terminal ... for over a year" to try and provide Marines communication abilities in "contested environments."

Like the Navy, while anecdotal evidence of the terminals' use by the Corps has cropped up on social media^[14], the Marines refused to say just how widespread the system is within the service.

In the fall of 2023, the Space Force^[15] also awarded Starshield a $70 million contract^[16], though details on how the service plans to use the internet are sparse.

Musk's Track Record with Russia, Starlink

According to Clayton Swope^[17], a researcher and aerospace security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there are plenty of things that the Navy and other branches can do to protect their data from unauthorized access.

Encryption and use of virtual private network, or VPN, technologies should prevent hackers from accessing whatever data the military chooses to send over Starlink and, as of this summer, the Navy was not authorizing any classified information^[18] to be transmitted over the network.

However, Starlink's implementation in the Ukraine war raises major concerns about the system's vulnerabilities and, more importantly, the man running the show.

In August 2023, The Debrief, citing Ukrainian officials, reported^[19] that Russia had conducted "large-scale cyberattacks to obtain unauthorized access to Android devices possessed by Ukrainian military personnel for planning and performing combat missions" and installed malicious software whose "functional purpose is to gather data from the Starlink satellite system."

But bigger questions loom over Elon Musk -- the man who owns and operates the entire system. Musk's influence is likely to grow dramatically after he helped reelect President-elect Donald Trump and is set to co-chair a commission that aims to slash the federal government, which includes the Pentagon. In the days after the election, Musk has become one of Trump's closest advisers and reportedly met with Iranian officials^[20] to discuss ways to defuse tensions in the Middle East.

In September 2023, a biography on Musk, later confirmed by the man himself, revealed that he thwarted an attack by Ukraine on Russian-held territory in Crimea by shutting off the Starlink service to the country. The act was presented as something Musk decided himself, and it earned him praise from top Russian official and former President Dmitry Medvedev.

"It looks like Musk is the last adequate mind in North America," Medvedev wrote on Musk's social media platform X^[21].

However, a year later, The Wall Street Journal reported^[22] that Musk had been in contact with Putin since late 2022, and he also spoke with top Putin aide Sergei Kiriyenko as recently as this year.

The report also noted that Musk had not just been willing to block Starlink access to Ukraine. At some point, at Putin's request, he avoided activating his Starlink service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Musk has been called out by Ukrainian officials^[23] for what they saw as interference with their plans and operations. But Musk argued on social media^[24] that if he "had agreed to [the Ukrainians'] request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation."

While at the time Musk had made that argument it wasn't known he'd been in contact with Putin, he had already been criticized over numerous comments that were seen as pro-Russian. He groused over the cost of providing the service^[25] to Ukraine and cheered on comments from^[26] Medvedev.

According to Swope, the comparison between Ukraine and the U.S. military is not "a one-for-one scenario where the U.S. government could find itself in a similar situation."

"The relationship with the U.S. government is really important for both," Swope argued, adding that he thinks it would be very unlikely that Musk and Starlink would similarly shut off service to the American military.

"I think, from a business standpoint, I don't see SpaceX doing that. But also from a vision standpoint, no ... that vision is dependent on this, you could say beneficial flywheel effect, the relationship it has with the U.S. government," he said.

This is an argument that the Pentagon itself has articulated.

Last August, the top Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, when faced with questions about Musk's behavior after a high-profile article in The New Yorker^[27] once again reported on his Ketamine use, told reporters that^[28] the Defense Department has "well-developed processes and procedures to look at things like contracts and services that are person-independent -- personality-independent."

However, the Defense Department has refused to answer whether Musk, with his growing closeness to Putin and other top Russian officials, is afforded a security clearance and access to closely guarded military secrets.

Both the Navy and Marine Corps when asked by Military.com refused to answer any questions about Musk or any security risks he poses.

When asked by Military.com in late October if the Pentagon was investigating the reports of contact with Putin, spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said she couldn't corroborate the report and wouldn't say whether the department was investigating.

Bound by Contracts

Swope argued that the examples of cutoff service in Ukraine are a "reflection of that lack of a contractual relationship that specified how the service would be used" and not an issue that would exist for the U.S. military.

"You can show that all the boxes are checked from a security standpoint, cybersecurity, whatever contractual requirements are placed on that company to make sure the government is certain it knows what it's getting and what it's agreeing to," he said.

"That's what companies are signing up for, effectively."

What is clear: Separating Musk from SpaceX and the two from government work is far from easy.

At the moment, SpaceX holds more than $700 million in contracts for Space Force's National Security Space Launch program, and a $1.8 billion dollar classified contract with the National Reconnaissance Agency, the agency that is tasked with running the nation's network of spy satellites.

Swope notes that this reliance also goes the other way around -- "the government is still a really important customer for SpaceX," he said.

But this reliance has, according to The New Yorker^[29], resulted in deference to Musk by even the highest of Pentagon officials.

The Pentagon's policy chief, then-Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl, was reduced to pleading with Musk not to cut off Starlink access to Ukraine, according to an article that was published in October 2023.

Experts like Swope also note that the relationship is only likely to grow in the future.

"To me, it's not so much that I'm worried about the government using more SpaceX -- I personally am worried if ... it's the other way, if they use less," Swope said. "There's no way around it. ... SpaceX plays such a big role in where we are in space today, that the obvious answer is just we need to lean hard on SpaceX or we're not going to be able to keep up the competition with China."

Related: Trump Put Elon Musk on Phone with Ukraine's Zelenskyy During Congratulatory Call, Official Says^[30]