The Secretary of the Navy wanted us to believe a warship can have a full complement of highly trained personnel even if some of them are down with morning sickness, or gone off to have babies. Moreover, the berthing spaces assigned to women on shipboard can only be filled by other women. Thus the Navy must find a female radar technician, say, to replace the pregnant or otherwise nondeployable radar technician who has departed. If one is not available, the warship must do without. Under the circumstances, operational readiness seems to be a delusion, a sacrifice offered up to putative feminists of both sexes.
Military history is ignored.
Israel used women combatants in its 1948 War of Independence. Stalin's experiment was shrouded in propaganda, and the results are unclear, but Israel said never again. Male soldiers lost control when they saw women being blown apart, and women, when taken captive, were brutalized sexually. Women reduced the combat effectiveness of Haganah units, Moshe Dayan said later, because men moved to protect them from capture. The thought of pregnant women in danger would have been insupportable.