President Biden used an International Women’s Day ceremony Monday to announce the nomination of two female military aviators with decades of combat experience to lead two of the Defense Department’s 11 major command organizations.
Air Force Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost was nominated by Biden to serve as head of U.S. Transportation Command. Army Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson will be nominated for her fourth star and to head U.S. Southern Command. Both women have ample experience to lead the commands, say experts, but they are also the only women who have the four-star qualification to serve in the positions.
“We all need to see and to recognize the barrier-breaking accomplishments of these women,” Biden said with the two women standing at attention behind him in the East Room of the White House. “They are warriors, they’re crisis-tested commanders, and best of all, they’re not done yet.”
The president described how Richardson deployed with her husband as helicopter pilots in the Iraq War in 2003. Von Ovolt, disallowed from flying combat missions as a woman until just five years ago, became a test pilot and flew the KC-135 Stratotanker on refueling missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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“The diversity of our nation makes us stronger, and diversity in our military ranks makes us better at defending the American people,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during the same White House ceremony.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Mackenzie Eaglen told the Washington Examiner that the scarcity of qualified female candidates has much to do with the failure to promote women to the highest levels of the military.
“Gen. Van Ovost is the only four-star female general in the military today. Once confirmed, Lt. Gen. Richardson will become just the second four-star woman in the U.S. Army, ever,” Eaglen said.
There are 43 four-star generals and admirals in the military today; 42 are men. Presently, all 11 combatant commands are led by men. Only Cyber Command’s Gen. Paul Nakasone, who is Asian American, is a minority.
There has only been one woman to lead a combatant command since they were created in 1986, when Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson led U.S. Northern Command, which protects the continental United States, from 2016 to 2018.
“While it is certainly great news that the most qualified people for these positions are women who’ve been recognized for their professionalism, it also shows how far the military has to go to normalize women in leadership roles,” said Eaglen.
Controversy erupted in February when it was reported that the two nominations had been held up by the Pentagon in the Trump administration, which feared that the Trump White House would not take well to the promotions by military leaders who had fallen out of favor.
Then-Secretary Mark Esper drew the ire of former President Donald Trump for refusing to support use of active-duty military to quell the June 2020 George Floyd protests. He later said that he worried the promotions would be derailed by the White House if officials thought he was making the recommendations to play politics. Esper would be fired by Trump days after the November election.
Once Biden ascended to the presidency, Austin passed the recommendations to the White House, and Biden sent them to the Senate for approval Friday.
U.S. Transportation Command is responsible for moving all military personnel and equipment globally. The command also has an important domestic function in times of emergency. TransCom played an outsize role when the coronavirus pandemic first hit, moving medical equipment, including coronavirus test kits and personal protective equipment, to sites across the nation and U.S. military bases overseas.
U.S. Southern Command is responsible for security and defense in Latin America, where battles are waged to keep drug traffickers from moving their product to American shores and to stop transnational criminal organizations from reaping billions in profit when they do. In addition to cooperating with and helping to train countries across the region to fight drug traffickers, terrorists, and criminal organizations, Southcom plays an active role in conducting humanitarian missions that give the U.S. a competitive edge over adversaries such as Russia and China.
Eaglen admitted that of the 11 commands, these two are not in war zones and therefore do not position the women to lead in the highest-profile geographies.
“There is no doubt that the regional combatant commands drive more headlines and are considered sexier,” she said. “However, projecting power doesn’t happen without transportation and logistics. The Defense Department essentially operates a global FedEx-USPS-Amazon equivalent for 2 million people every single day.”
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Richardson is currently the three-star commander of U.S. Army North, based in San Antonio, Texas. Van Ovost currently leads the Air Force’s Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. Both will need Senate confirmation to serve in the new positions.
“We all celebrate these accomplishments, but I’ll be thrilled when it is no longer a news story because it’s such a regular occurrence,” said Eaglen.
