First female Army infantry officer assigned to Ranger training battalion

Capt. Kristen Griest, the first female infantry officer, has been assigned to the 4^th Ranger Training Battalion of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Fort Benning, according to a U.S. Army official.

Griest, one of the first three women to earn the coveted Ranger tab last year, will be a platoon tactical trainer in the battalion, said Army spokesman Col. Patrick Seiber with Public Affairs at the Pentagon.

Griest, 27, will be one of more than two dozen recent Captain’s Career Course graduates in that role, Seiber said.

“Capt. Griest is one of the 27 post Maneuver Captain’s Career Course pre-company command authorized to work in this role in the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th Ranger training battalions,” Seiber said on Thursday.

Griest, a 2011 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, recently graduated from the Captain’s Career Course at Fort Benning and was granted a branch transfer from military police to infantry, making her the first woman infantry officer. She and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver were the first women to graduate from Ranger School, the Army’s most difficult combat training course, in August 2015.

Griest and the other captains must successfully complete a 90-day Ranger Instructor Training and Education Program this summer. The tactical trainers supervise the training of a 60-plus person Ranger training platoon that consists of 50 students and about a dozen Ranger instructors, all non-commissioned officers.

The role of the tactical trainers is to insure that Ranger students meet the demanding course standards and make recommendations to the company commander for students who do not meet those standards, Seiber said.

Platoon tactical trainers, once they are certified, grade student patrols in the same manner as Ranger instructors. Griest will be working in the Benning phases, which include the initial assessment phase at Camp Rogers and the first patrol phase at Camp Darby.

After completing their assignment as tactical trainers, the captains usually move to other units and await company command, Seiber said.

Griest, a native of Orange, Conn., has been at the forefront of the Army’s gender integration. She was part of a pilot program in which 19 women entered Ranger School last April. Since then, Ranger School has been opened to all qualified students, men or women. Maj. Lisa Jaster, also in that original pilot program, graduated the course in October.

As the Army in particular and the military in general opens all of its jobs to qualified women, Fort Benning, because of its training role, will be at the center of much of the initial process.

Last month, the Army approved 22 soldiers — 21 female West Point and ROTC cadets and one Officer Candidate School graduate — to commission into the infantry and armor branches. They will go through the infantry and armor Basic Officer Leadership Courses starting this summer. Thirteen of the women will be working to become armor officers and nine infantry officers.

This story was originally published May 20, 2016 at 3:45 PM with the headline "First female Army infantry officer assigned to Ranger training battalion."