Provisions in the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require women to register for the military draft, while carving out an exemption from serving in front-line roles, have sparked vigorous debate among combat veterans and enlisted personnel about the wisdom of such changes and their likely impact on the armed forces.

The 607-page bill authorizes topline funding of $911.8 billion for the military and contains a number of provisions aimed at improving military life. They include an increase in monthly pay for junior enlisted personnel, housing allowances for junior personnel on sea duty, extensions of bonus schemes that were set to expire, and making promotions that were subject to delays in Senate confirmation effective retroactively.

In other ways, the bill dramatically widens the front of the Biden administration’s push for inclusivity and diversity by revising selective service requirements to include women.

Subtitle J of the bill reads, “The committee recommends a series of provisions that would require women to register for selective service under the same conditions as currently applied to men.”

Section 529B of the bill contains an exemption that would, in theory, limit the impact of the proposed change.

It states, “The committee recommends a provision that would specify that women drafted into service under the Selective Service System may not be compelled to join combat roles that were closed to women prior to December 3, 2015, train or become qualified in a combat arms military occupational specialty, or join a combat arms unit.”

Given these realities, and the exemption from combat roles in the new NDAA bill, some observers do not see the change to the selective service criteria as especially significant.

“There are plenty of noncombat and support roles in the U.S. military, and expanding the draft to include women does not mean putting women in the infantry or the Rangers,” Keith Naughton, the principal of Silent Majority Strategies, a Germantown, Maryland-based consultancy, told The Epoch Times.

As interest in national service dwindles among the younger population, the danger of an understaffed military incapable of carrying out its functions grows, said Scott McQuarrie, a former officer in both the Army and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, who now works as an attorney.

“We must have a sufficiently sized, adequately trained and equipped military in order to deter potential adversaries from drawing us into what would be a devastating conflict or, in the event of a conflict, to protect and defend the homeland and our national security interests,” McQuarrie told The Epoch Times.

“If we cannot fill the ranks with volunteers and/or afford a volunteer force, what are the alternatives? The American people must answer that difficult question,” he said.

McQuarrie said trying to maintain military readiness while relying exclusively on the pool of young men who volunteer for service might lead to an unpalatable outcome: lowering the standards and requirements for male inductees.

The armed forces took such a course during the Vietnam War under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in a program known as Project 100,000. McQuarrie described Project 100,000 as nothing short of a disaster for the military and the country.

He suggested that drafting a small number of women to serve in noncombat roles could be one way to address the personnel shortfall and maintain the highest standards for men who do take on frontline combat roles.

If the NDAA passes in its current form, it is not impossible to envision a near future where more women seek entry to—and are granted—frontline combat roles.

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But given time-tested differences between the sexes’ physical aptitudes, this is all but certain to require adjusting physical standards, they say.

“I think the message that citizenship sometimes comes with an obligation to one’s country is an entirely healthy message to send to both sexes, not just young men,” Sebastian Junger, a journalist and documentarian who spent years embedded with U.S. forces in combat zones in Afghanistan, told The Epoch Times.

But there can be no illusions about the arduous nature of frontline duty and the immense physical exertions it involves, he stressed. Junger drew an analogy between the U.S. military and fire departments, which are subject to calls for diversification, often from people who have never been firefighters themselves.

“Combat, like firefighting, is incredibly rigorous and demanding, and efforts to integrate fire departments with women have found themselves at a kind of crossroads. Do you scale down the physical requirements in order to get more women into firehouses, or keep the number of pull-ups you have to do exactly the same and have virtually no women passing?” he said.

Junger warned against lowering standards simply for the sake of increasing diversity, a goal that has nothing to do with the imperative of winning wars with the fewest possible U.S. casualties. Young men on the front lines will be acutely conscious of the consequences for their own unit cohesion and personal safety that any such changes entail.

“What I would argue is that any woman who’s in a combat role, in a frontline trench, has to be able to say to her male peers, ‘I passed every single test that you did,’” Junger said.

“What you don’t want to do is have women pass a lower standard of test and then put them out there, having to defend themselves to these young men who are understandably concerned that this person’s going to be a liability.”

In a war zone, the day-to-day challenges that soldiers face are already tough enough for many, if not most, men, he said.

“In the physical challenges of combat, guys were carrying 120 pounds. Very few men can do that, and a tiny fraction of women can do that,” said Junger.

Junger said that adding women not subject to the same physical requirements could lead to many more complaints and harm unit morale and cohesion.

“That would be awful for everybody.”

Mark Moyar, former director of the Office for Civilian-Military Cooperation at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says people who understand the requirements of day-to-day military service tend to hold a more skeptical outlook on the prospects for adding a larger number of women to the armed forces.

“As someone who has spent considerable time working with the U.S. military, I think that people familiar with the military are likely to oppose the registration of women because they know firsthand that the average man isn’t interchangeable with the average woman,” Moyar, now a professor at Hillsdale College in Michigan, told The Epoch Times.

Although women have proven their aptitude at some military tasks, there remain other critical functions where differences in size, muscle mass, upper-body strength, endurance, speed, and other factors are stark, he said.

“Military service generally requires strenuous activity and austere living conditions, which men are generally more capable of tolerating than women. Combat demands a willingness to use lethal force, which men are more likely to possess,” Moyar said.

“A significant minority of women are willing and able to serve, and many have served their country well, but many other women would prefer not to join the military, especially during their years of highest fertility. The fact that aggressive recruitment has failed to bring the percentage of women in the military to 20 percent is a good indicator of differences between men and women in preferences and suitability.”

The Department of Defense did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.