16 Badass Women Passed The Army Ranger Fitness Test The First Time They Were Allowed To Take It

Can I get a “Hooah”* for equality and America?

*Yea, yea whatever. Army Rangers allegedly don’t say “Hooah.”

For the first time ever, women were allowed to apply for entrance into the prestigious Ranger School, the breeding ground for the Army’s elite Ranger unit. Twenty were accepted over the past few months after passing the Army National Guard Ranger Training and Assessment Course.

The opening day of Ranger School was this week, and it begins with a test that breaks many entrants. Per the Army Times, soldiers are given “two minutes to do 49 pushups and two minutes to do 59 situps, and they also must run five miles in 40 minutes and do six chinups.”

Yea, I probably couldn’t do that. But 16 women did. Things will only get tougher from there, though. For men and women. From The Washington Post:

The initial assessment phase typically eliminates about 60 percent of all students. Over the next several days, it also will include a 12-mile road march while carrying 45 pounds, a land-navigation exercise without the use of GPS, and a water survival test that includes climbing a 35-foot tower, walking 70 feet across a log and crawling along a rope before dropping 35 feet into the water.

Women were allowed to apply for the school for the first time as part of a new Pentagon directive that wants to assess how to best integrate women into combat units. These women, if they make it out of the 62-day school, will not be assigned to the Ranger Regiment, which deploys overseas, but will be allowed to wear the Ranger tab on their uniform.

Which seems like bullshit, but at least it’s a step in the right direction.