The Defense Department is considering terminating 14 advisory boards that guide Pentagon leaders on an array of personnel and operational issues, including the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, the panel that has fought since 1951 to integrate women into the U.S. military.
In an email sent last month to senior defense officials and reviewed by Military.com, Deputy Director of Washington Headquarters Services Bob Salesses proposed sunsetting more than a dozen committees and advisory boards and merging two additional panels.
Thirteen of the boards would require congressional approval to dissolve but would be “administratively suspended” pending the necessary legislation. The dissolution of DACOWITS would not require an act of Congress.
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The proposal, first reported by Military Times, follows a review ordered in March by then-Pentagon Chief of Staff Joe Kasper of all DoD advisory boards to determine whether they provided “appropriate value” and aligned with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “priorities of restoring the warrior ethos.”
The review included assessments of the boards’ duties and objectives, operating costs, activities, and results of their work.
“Advisory committees have and will continue to provide an important role in shaping public policy within DoD. Our stewardship responsibilities require that we continually assess to ensure each advisory committee, board or panel … provides appropriate value as times and requirements change,” Kasper wrote.
In that memo, Kasper also announced the immediate end of the Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order abolishing equality and affirmative action initiatives in the federal government.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sue Gough did not provide comment on Salesses’ email but said that the results of the review remain under consideration.
“As noted previously, the department has been reviewing all DoD advisory committees and boards to ensure their efforts align with our most pressing strategic priorities and the president’s goals,” Gough said in an email Wednesday to Military.com. “We have nothing to announce at this time.”
The 74-year-old DACOWITS was created to advise the department on recruitment of women into the armed forces. Its studies, recommendations and proposals have been instrumental in expanding military opportunities for women, including sea, air and ground combat roles.
The panel previously faced threats to its existence in 2021, when then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the review of 42 Pentagon advisory committees in part as a response to last-minute appointments by the outgoing Trump administration in the waning days of his first term, but also to assess their cost and efficiency.
As part of that review, DACOWITS’ work was suspended and members were asked to resign. At the time, the DoD Manpower and Reserve Affairs office recommended that the work of DACOWITS be integrated into the diversity committee, a group established at the end of Trump’s first term in the wake of racial justice protests over the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.
The proposal to merge DACOWITS with the new committee raised the ire of six female veterans in Congress, including Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa.; Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa; Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J.; and then-Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., who pressed Austin to save the panel as a stand-alone committee.
“We do not believe its work is complete, as evidenced by so many issues we are currently addressing as a nation and a military,” they wrote in a letter to Austin in July 2021.
In August of that year, Austin reinstated DACOWITS and named new members.
This time, however, the fight to preserve DACOWITS will likely be more challenging. Hegseth openly opposes women serving in combat specialties, and already has dismantled a program that supported women who served on security teams, especially those who can operate in locations where cultural norms prohibit male troops from engaging with civilian women or children.
“It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said on the subject of women serving in combat during an appearance on “The Shawn Ryan Show” last November.
Hegseth fired the first female to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti, without explanation, and has ordered a review of fitness standards to ensure they are not adapted to accommodate women.
The Pentagon also removed hundreds of webpages from official sites that honored women and minorities in service, including articles on Navy and Army websites about women’s history and an article on the first female Air Force Thunderbird pilot.
Those have since been restored. However, many other military webpages, including a video celebrating DACOWITS’s 61st year of existence, remain unavailable or have been permanently removed in the department-wide purge of posted media.
“When content is either mistakenly removed or if it’s maliciously removed, we continue to work quickly to restore it,” Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell said at the time.
In April, the Defense Department announced the dismissal of all members of advisory boards that were under review, including those who served on DACOWITS.
Houlahan announced earlier this week that she plans to take up the fight against the administration in support of women in the military. She planned a press conference for Thursday in Washington, D.C., with Sherrill; Iraq War veteran Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa.; and former Navy intelligence officer Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., to discuss the dissolution of DACOWITS and other efforts to undermine women in the military.
Under the Trump administration, military women are “being silenced,” said Sue Fulton, executive director of the Women in the Service Coalition, a group collaborating with Houlahan on the press conference.
“Senior women are fired without cause. DACOWITS (Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services) is reportedly being disbanded, despite a long history of recommendations that strengthened military readiness. Women are removed from DoD websites. Service members are discouraged or prohibited from participating in any events that acknowledge the historic legacy of women,” Fulton wrote in a statement.
According to Salesses’ email, the boards and committees recommended for termination include the:
- Department of Defense Board of Actuaries
- Department of Defense Medicare-Eligible Retiree Health Care Board of Actuaries
- Defense Advisory Committee on Military Personnel
- Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services
- Tribal and Economically Disadvantaged Communities Advisory Committee
- Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program Advisory Board
- Non-Federal Interest Advisory Committee
- Board on Coastal Engineering Research
- U.S. Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group
- Board of Visitors for the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
- Table Rock Lake Oversight Committee
- National Reconnaissance Office Advisory Board
- Advisory Board for National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
- National Security Agency Emerging Technologies Board
The review also recommended merging the Defense Advisory Committee for the Prevention of Sexual Misconduct and the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution and Defense of Sexual Assault in the Armed Forces.
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