A company of all-women tank operators will be stationed along the Egyptian border next month for the first time in the military’s history as part of an ongoing pilot program to assess the feasibility of female armored crews. The female tank crews are currently completing their training at the IDF’s Shizafon Base in the Negev desert, which houses the military’s Armored Corps School. After a short break, they will then be sent into the command of the mixed-gender Caracal Battalion, which defends the northern portion of Israel’s border with Egypt.
According to the commander of the
Caracal Battalion, Lt. Col. Erez Shabtai, in addition to being the IDF’s first
active deployment of female tank operators, this will also make his the IDF’s
first infantry unit to have tanks directly under its control. She says that
this is highly significant. Everyone is going to be watching them.
This became prominent when in
March, eight female soldiers from the border troops completed their
training for service in a tank unit. A total of 19 female IDF employees have
taken this course since November 2020. Even the military launched a new pilot
programme to consider allowing female to serve in tank crews, after an initial
trial from 2017 to 2018 was considered ineffective.
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