Her Title: Cryptologic Technician. Her Occupation: Warrior.

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/us/shannon-kent-military-spy.html

Her Title: Cryptologic Technician. Her Occupation: Warrior.
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
Feb. 8, 2019


Shannon Kent, shown during her first combat deployment in 2007 to Iraq, illustrated an unspoken truth: that for many years women have been doing military jobs as dangerous, secretive and specialized as anything men do.

Given who she really was, military officials had little choice in how they described Shannon Kent. They said only that she was a “cryptologic technician,” which anyone might assume meant that her most breakneck work was behind a desk.

In reality, she spent much of her professional life wearing body armor and toting an M4 rifle, a Sig Sauer pistol strapped to her thigh, on operations with Navy SEALs and other elite forces — until a suicide bombing took her life last month in northeastern Syria.

She was, in all but name, part of the military’s top-tier Special Operations forces. Officially a chief petty officer in the Navy, she actually worked closely with the nation’s most secretive intelligence outfit, the National Security Agency, to target leaders of the Islamic State.

The last few years have seen a profound shift in attitudes toward women in combat roles. Since 2016, combat jobs have been open to female service members, and they have been permitted to try out for Special Operations units. More than a dozen have completed the Army’s Ranger school, one of the most challenging in the military. Some have graduated from infantry officer courses, and even command combat units. And in November, a woman completed the Army’s grueling Special Forces Assessment and Selection course, the initial step to becoming a Green Beret.

[htuttle]

1. A "Cryptologic Technician" embedded with Navy SEALs is some kind of Ninja, if you ask me

That is a SERIOUS job.

[dalton99a]

3. With serious talents

Chief Kent spoke a half-dozen Arabic dialects and four other languages. She was one of the first women to complete the rigorous course required for other troops to accompany Navy SEALs on raids. She could run a 3:30 marathon, do a dozen full-arm-hang pull-ups and march for miles with a 50-pound rucksack.

More than 1,000 people attended Chief Kent’s memorial service on Friday at the United States Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Md., where she was posthumously promoted to senior chief petty officer and awarded five medals and citations. The awards described her Special Operations work and also said she had been the noncommissioned officer in charge at the N.S.A.’s operations directorate for four years.

[fierywoman]

4. NO ! NO! NO! Goddamn. I'm crying.