Women began to fully integrate into the United States military in the 1970s. After Congress passed and President Ford signed Public Law 94-106, mandating women’s admittance into US military academies, military senior leaders instituted the Combat Exclusion Policy, to reassure those both inside and outside the military that women would not take part in combat operations even as they comprised larger percentages of the military. In a case of the best laid plans of military and men, implementation did not always go exactly as planned. In this traditional panel, Dr. Christine Cook, Dr. Heather Stur, and PhD Candidate Kim Enderle will present papers that examine the original formulation of the Combat Exclusion Policy and its implementation, as well as times when military women served in combat situations despite a policy that stipulated their exclusion. Dr. Cook explores how military senior leaders conflicted with Congressional members in 1977 about whether to have a combat exclusion policy at all, and if so, what jobs should be in the exclusionary domain of men, in “‘There is No Law, But It is Policy’: How Senior Military Leaders Drafted the Military Combat Exclusion Policy.” The military officially put in place a Combat Exclusion Policy in 1977 that did not allow women to be in units that would be in combat, but practically speaking, in battlefield situations the front line of battle blurred. In “Airborne Servicewomen: How the Female Paratroopers of the 118^th Military Police Company in Grenada Challenged the Combat Exclusion Policy,” Dr. Stur examines the political angst that occurred when the mission dictated that paratroopers from the 82^nd Airborne Division jump into Grenada, and Army leaders failed to exclude women. While the Army’s “Big Five” combat arms branches included Infantry, Armor/Cavalry, Field Artillery, Engineers, and combat Aviation, each of these branches identified positions that seemed less likely for women to face combat situations, which allowed for the assignment of increasing numbers of women soldiers. Beginning in the late 1980s, women began to fill these positions that, in accordance with Department of Defense policy, women should have been excluded from. Military Women Aviators arguably challenged combat exclusion lines the most. In “Clipped Wings and Calculated Risks: Women Military Aviators and the Logistics of Combat Exclusion in the Post-Vietnam Era 1973-1994,” Kim Enderle examines how the Combat Exclusion Policy and the “Risk Rule” were arbitrarily applied to military women aviators from certain aircraft to preserve combat aviation as a male domain. Manpower shortages meant women trained and flew medical evacuation, troop transport, and logistics missions in direct support of combat operations during Operation Desert Storm. After it became clear that women served de facto combat missions, the Combat Exclusion Policy was revised to no longer apply to the Aviation branch as of 1993. President Obama eventually repealed the Combat Exclusion Policy in 2010, and Leon Panetta executed the repeal effective January 24, 2013. The papers presented in this panel help to inform why the policy really ended long before its official termination.