The U.S. Navy recently identified a pair of naval aviators who died when their aircraft crashed in Washington last week after launching a training flight from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

Lt. Cmdr. Lyndsay P. Evans and Lt. Serena N. Wileman, both 31, were killed when the EA-18G Growler fighter jet they were flying crashed near Mount Rainier. Authorities are currently investigating what caused the crash.

They were carrying out a routine training mission in poor weather conditions at the time. Because the terrain where their aircraft, a modified type of F/A-18 fighter jet, went down was challenging, it took three days to find it. It is said to be worth around $67 million and is considered highly advanced.

The women had just come back from the Middle East, where they were part of the Electronic Attack Squadron 130 with the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. They were participating in operations against Iran-backed Houthi rebels, protecting the international shipping lanes they were threatening.

Navy Flight Commander Capt. Marvin Scott said: “I have personally flown with both of these great Americans in both training and dynamic combat operations, and they always performed professionally and precisely. I could not be more proud to have served with each of them.”

According to the Navy, Evans was one of the first women to ever fly in combat missions over land and received three Strike Flight Air Medals for her contributions to missions from December to March. She was previously part of an all-female Super Bowl flyover celebrating 50 years of women flying for the Navy.

Military accused of being too woke

Although this is undoubtedly a tragedy and a horrific loss for these women’s families, the news that we lost two female naval pilots is renewing accusations against the military of being too woke.

Veteran soldiers have complained that woke policies are threatening military readiness, and many of them are being imposed by political leaders who lack an understanding of the military and its requirements.

For example, it can undermine leadership authority when people have to wonder whether someone is promoted because of merit or whether it was simply to fulfill a quota. Much like in the private sector, it can also result in personnel serving in specialties that they are not qualified or prepared for. And crucially, it can compromise the cohesiveness needed for soldiers to work together successfully by emphasizing differences in sex, ethnicity and race.

In 2015, Ray Mabus, who was Secretary of the Navy at the time, rejected a Marine Corps study that determined women were twice as likely as men to experience combat injuries and that gender-integrated combat formations moved slower and shot less accurately. The same year, all combat jobs in the American military were opened up to women.

Some in the Navy have complained about growing training bureaucracy, with courses about topics such as equal opportunity and harassment adding to their overwhelming workload and sometimes pushing more relevant courses off the agenda, like those about the China-Taiwan dispute.

The U.S. isn’t the only place where the military is being accused of wokeism. Last month, the UK’s Royal Marines renamed some of their training exercises to eliminate sexual connotations, with longtime mission rehearsals like “Violent Entry” and “Final Thrust” now considered offensive to the female personnel who might take part in them. Their new names? “Green Salamander” and “Commando Forge,” respectively. They even renamed the “Direct Action” exercise “Dragon Warrior.”

They also recently ditched gender-based names such as “airman” and “seaman” in favor of the more PC “aviator” and “seafarer.”

Sources for this article include:

CNN.com

DailyMail.co.uk

AEI.org

ABCNews.go.com

Heritage.org