These days, the doors in the military are open wider to women. We have been seeing more and more armed forces around the world allowing women to more responsibilities with foremost being combat roles. This means that women will be at the frontlines together with the men and doing what men have been doing for thousands of years ever since somebody found a use for a piece of wood or a rock --- killing each other.

With combat roles mainly open to women, eventually some highly specialized roles will be created to fully use their capabilities. For Norway, which has opened combat roles to women in 1985, it is about creating a unit comprised of women for more unique missions. Called the Jegertroppen or the “Hunter Troop” ,the Norwegians have established the first all-female special operations unit.

In an article in Foreign Affairs, one of the problems that the Norwegian units encounter was that they cannot speak to women.  Even in urban combat, there will always be contact with women in the general population and thus having women alongside, or preferable an all-female unit to take this responsibility has become important. Here is what the Forsvarets (FSK) website says:

Ulikhetene mellom kjønnene og de styrkene som kvinnene representerer har høy egenverdi under gjennomføring av operasjoner. Dette ønsker vi å utnytte ved å etablere en egen kapasitet bestående av vernepliktige kvinnelige spesialsoldater.

Rough translation:

The differences between the sexes and the need to have forces are made up of women represent a high intrinsic value during execution of operations. We want to use to establish a capacity consisting of female special troop conscripts.

But it’s not only about interacting with women that’s required for members of the Jegertroppen. Since they are as special operations unit, they will have to go intensive training designed for special operations troops which of course will be challenging. In 2014, 13 trainees out of the initial 317 candidates were able to finish the tough year-long course of the Jegertroppen. In 2015, 14 of the 196 applicants were able to continue to join the unit. The graduates are expected to conduct special reconnaissance missions and will be trained on parachute operations, winter operations, close quarters combat, urban warfare, weapons, survival, and patrol skills. The only difference between the women and men is the load that they carry, 60 lbs. for the women while it is 88 lbs. for the men.

According to the NATO Association of Canada, other special operations forces are interested in knowing more about the Jegertroppen with the U.S. Special Operations Command taking a special interest in their program. This most probably to study on allowing women to do special operations missions as more roles are opened to them in the U.S. military.

Will there be more all-female special forces units in the future? It looks like it and the Norwegians will be leading that way as they have been always a pioneering county especially in empowering women in all spheres of their society, and that also includes the armed forces.