Pentagon shifts women in combat study to lab with $12 billion track record

The U.S. Department of Defense has moved a long-running study on the effectiveness of women in combat roles to Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. The shift places the review under an entity that has received approximately $12 billion in defense contracts over the last decade.

A Defense Department spokesperson confirmed that Hopkins APL is now conducting the study. The department declined to explain why it moved the project away from the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia. The new assignment was first announced in a memo in December 2025 by Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Tata wrote that the initiative aims to evaluate the operational effectiveness of mixed-gender units. This evaluation comes roughly a decade after former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered the military to integrate women into combat units, a policy implemented by the start of 2016. The review occurs as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has voiced opposition to women in combat roles, implements strict sex-neutral fitness standards.

Civil rights advocates and military groups worry the move was designed to select a specific researcher at APL. They point to Yevgeniya “Jane” Pinelis, who wrote a 2015 study on the negative effects of integrating women into Marine Corps combat units. Hegseth has cited Pinelis’s work in his book “The War on Warriors.”

Gillian Thomas, senior counsel of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, said the lack of transparency is a concern. “Since it’s come to light, we’ve gotten no transparency about why the study is being undertaken,” Thomas said. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, argues that Pinelis’s previous work was widely criticized for flawed design and biased analysis.

The legal action follows an August Freedom of Information Act request that the Defense Department has not yet fulfilled. Federal law requires the department to respond within 20 business days to indicate whether it will grant, partially grant, or deny the request. Thomas stated that understanding the Pentagon's reasoning is a matter of national security.

Hopkins APL, located off Route 29 in Laurel, Maryland, is the largest recipient of defense contracts among the 15 research centers funded by the Pentagon. The laboratory was founded in 1942 to mobilize scientific resources for wartime challenges. Its work ranges from missile systems to submarine and space technologies.

According to the university’s June financial report, the Department of War was responsible for about 70% of APL’s revenue during the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years. In the fiscal year ending in June 2025, the laboratory generated about $2.8 billion, which accounted for roughly one-third of the university’s total revenue.

The lawsuit questions APL’s expertise in studying occupation-specific performance and the selection of Pinelis to lead the review. Pinelis has spent most of her career in the military, including stints at APL, the Defense Department, and the Marine Corps. Representatives for APL and Pinelis did not respond to requests for comment.

Thomas noted that shifting the study midstream to a researcher with this public track record is concerning. “To midstream be yanking it away and giving it to someone with this public track record is concerning to say the least and we think an explanation is owed,” Thomas said.