On "Fox & Friends" Friday morning, former Navy fighter pilot Lea Gabrielle joined Steve Doocy and Elisabeth Hasselbeck to discuss whether women being in all combat roles was "really a good idea" -- and as it turns out, the panel decided that placing women in non-traditional, unfeminine roles is not in the military's best interest.
Gabrielle, who herself demonstrated the ability of women to perform as well as men in combat situations, noted that one reason women should be allowed in combat roles is "that it helps in career progression, if you've served in combat, so to say that we're closing off all combat roles to women -- it's good to put the pressure on the services to ask that question."
"That being said," she continued, "places like special operations, like the Navy SEALs and the Army Green Berets, they need to be given the room and the space to say 'No' if they need to." Gabrielle added that "if we can't show that we're going to make those areas of the military stronger by adding women, then the answer is that we're not making it stronger, we're making it weaker."
Brian Kilmeade's fill-in -- in all respects -- asked whether she believed that "this Pentagon, which is known for some social engineering, is really going to maintain [high] standards as opposed to letting people in who might actually lower those standards?"
Gabrielle replied that people currently serving would say that it couldn't be done because the United States military is "not an equal opportunity employer, we're talking about people who do our nation's bidding, they have to be able to protect our country."
Hasselbeck introduced a study by the Marine Corps that indicated that "all-male units outperformed gender-integrated units on 69 percent of tasks," and that "women had a 40.5 percent rate of injury, compared to 18.8 percent for men."
Gabrielle contended that "there are things women are doing in special operations that we're not going to talk about, but they're using their attributes as women to do things that are very special -- so there are roles for women. But let's not pretend that we're all the same."
Watch the entire segment below via Fox News.
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