Women in combat broke the “iron” ceiling more than a decade ago when female soldiers volunteered to throw themselves into some of the toughest operations carried out during the War on Terror, deploying with elite military units under a task force known as the Cultural Support Team (CST).
A new three-part documentary series, “Guerrera,” which bowed Saturday on Amazon, YouTube and Google TV, reveals the indispensable role women have played in combat.
“We did it — females in combat arms. The legacy is we broke the ceiling, the hard ceiling, not even a glass ceiling,” said retired Sgt. First Class Jeramy Neusmith, Army Ranger, who helped train the women of the CST program at Fort Bragg. “[It] was f—ing iron. We breached it.”
SHOULD WOMEN SERVE IN COMBAT? MILITARY EXPERTS WEIGH IN
The series uncovers little-known details about the female troops who were successfully paired with elite special operations units like Delta Force and the Army Rangers. Their goal was to address intelligence gaps in Afghanistan and Iraq by speaking with local women and children who had in-depth knowledge of active terrorist movements.
Though the documentary series was years in the making by producer and director Will Agee and executive producer Jessica Yahn — who served in the CST program — the timing of its release coincides with a moment in the U.S. where some in top positions are once again questioning whether women should have the right to fight with America’s elite.
“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, it has made fighting more complicated,” then-nominee and now confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said during a November 2024 interview with “The Sean Ryan Show.” Later in an interview on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” he appeared to have shifted his position and said, “If we have the right standard and women meet that standard, roger. Let’s go.”
Hegseth did not repeat his previously stated beliefs when pressed about it during his January confirmation and has said he does not plan to reverse the 2013 Combat Exclusion Policy, which allowed women to vie for elite positions.
But his comments renewed an old debate about the effectiveness of women in combat — despite more than a decade of evidence proving capability and operational efficacy.
“Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you’re on — which there’s plenty of Republicans, plenty of Democrats in “Guerrera” — every single one of them, man and woman, want a high standard, and that is such a unifying point,” Yahn told Fox News Digital. “I hope what comes out of the film is just the essence that more unites us than divides us.
“And it’s just a matter of getting down to that rich discourse and breaking through some of those things that we immediately may perceive the other side is thinking.”
In the series, Neusmith argues the turning point in what would become a major shift in American policy for women in combat started after 1st Lt. Ashley White was killed alongside Ranger forces during an operation in Afghanistan in 2011.
White became the first CST member to be killed in combat after she and the team of Rangers she was attached to entered a compound booby-trapped with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). White and two other Rangers were killed on Oct. 22, 2011.
“Ashley died — she died in combat. No Rangers stopped, no Rangers turned around, cried, no one wept, right on target,” Neusmith highlights in the series. “They did their job, and then they went back and handled the death of their comrade. We beat the stigma.
“All the stigmas they put out there — bone density, you know, men are going to be susceptible, you know, they’ll pay attention to women. No,” he continued. “I mean, they cared, but they couldn’t care at that time. They had to do their job.”
Though the CST women were assigned to elite units, they were not special forces, and technically it was still illegal for women to serve in combat roles when the first batch of CSTs deployed in 2011. However, they were trained to not only keep up with the special forces, but to engage enemy combatants alongside America’s best-of-the-best.
“One of my pet peeves is when people try to blame something on a gender or a race or a sexual preference or anything but the human standing in front of you, who can or cannot do something,” said retired Seg. Major George Fraser, Special Forces, who also received four Purple Hearts and six Bronze Stars for Valor. “That’s the end of it for me.”
The series is dedicated to Capt. Jennifer Moreno, the second woman in the CST program to die in combat while out with her team of Rangers on Oct. 5, 2013, during a raid on a compound in Afghanistan.
Moreno and the team she was with were ambushed after combatants lured the unit into a deactivated minefield, before the IEDs were then activated by the terrorists they were pursuing.
The situation was akin to “teleporting yourself into the middle of a minefield,” explained Special Operations Veteran Luke Ryan, Army Ranger, who was there that night.
The operation, which was expected to be a “quick snatch and go,” became one of the most brutal nights of the war, which saw four American soldiers killed and 30 others wounded.
Moreno, a trained nurse, was killed after she ran across the IED-embedded compound in an attempt to reach a fallen comrade.
“She was going to save a life come hell or high water,” said retired Sgt. Tom Block, Army Ranger, who was severely wounded by a suicide bomber that night, permanently costing him his right eye. “She embodied heroism that night.”
Sgt. Joseph Peters, Special Agent; Sgt. Patrick Hawkins, Army Ranger; and Pfc. Cody Patterson, Army Ranger, were also killed in the IED ambush.
The CST program, along with others like Lioness and Female Engagement Teams, contributed to the U.S. Department of Defense’s decision in 2013 to officially open up combat roles to women.
Women would not be permitted to vie for the elite slots until 2015, which would see the first two women to graduate from the infamous Army Ranger school. Since then, over 140 women have graduated from the program alongside their male peers.
Though the Army in 2022 lowered general physical standards for women and older troops completing annual physical exams, it did not alter the standards required from graduates of its elite programs like the Rangers or Green Berets.
The women of the CST program have championed calls to maintain universal standards for males and females in arms, but they flat reject the argument that women shouldn’t be allowed in combat.
When asked what Agee hopes viewers will take away from the series, he said first and foremost the “recognition of unsung heroes in our midst” and the “sacrifices that our men and women who serve in the military take day in and day out.”
Agee quoted a comment made by Ryan in the series in which he said, “There is a mechanism of dialogue that is broken in the United States right now.”
“I really would love ‘Guerrera’ to go a small step in fixing that mechanism of dialogue,” he said. “I hope we can watch a documentary film that deals with complicated concepts, that we will discuss them respectfully.”
“We can differ in terms of opinion, but we can all come back at the end of the day to understand and to underline the unity… [the] thing that we need the most of in this country,” Agee added. “It’s what makes a military unit thrive, and it’s also what I think makes a society thrive.”
The series “Guerrera” will also be released on Apple in the coming weeks.
