The military lifted the ban on women serving in combat roles in January, allowing women to serve in the infantry.

The elite special operations units such as the Navy SEALS and the Army Rangers are now in the process of determining if women can join their ranks.

Part of that process will include determining if the current standards for admission into the elite units are appropriate, Admiral William McRaven, the top commander of special operations units, testified before a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee.

“I get asked frequently, well, can you have gender-neutral standards? And I say, this is easy for me, because I’ve never had other genders,” McRaven said. “There is only one standard. So, we need to find out, are those the appropriate standards, because we’ve built those standards over the years, and now we’ve got to test the value of those standards.”

The special operations forces will examine if the current standards accurately reflect the needs of the forces, which could result in the standards being lowered because they are more difficult than the forces’ work requires.

“My point is, I will provide the secretary [of defense] a plan for determining how we’re going to get women into those” units, Mcraven continued. “But frankly, then I have to test the hypothesis … by going through and seeing if we can actually make that happen.”

McRaven praised the work of women in the military, noting they go on missions while attached to infantry units quite often.

“We are putting them in harm’s way every single night,” McRaven said.

Lawmakers also discussed other aspects of the special operations forces’ work at the hearing such as the command structure and potential future budgetary constraints.

“I do (see that happening),” McChrystal said when asked by Candy Crowley about female members of those elite military units. “I think you’ll see probably in all of those units. I think you already see them serving in functions around those units–intelligence pilots and what not.”

“There are positions that are much better for females–there are things you can do in special operations that are more difficult to do with just men,” he continued.

McChrystal said the implementation of the policy, however, will involve “complexity” regarding the ability of women to serve in any role.

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden emphasized the need for standards to stay the same.

“These kinds of standards cannot be different for men and women–these have to do with actually accomplishing the job,” Hayden said. “If the standard is here, and only a small percentage of women can match that standard for reasons that are biological, the standard has to stay there, otherwise you’re risking mission success.”

“We’ve had this ongoing issue with sexual harassment, sexual assault. I believe it’s because we’ve had separate classes of military personnel–at some level,” Dempsey said at a joint press conference with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to formally announce the ban has been lifted.

“Now, it’s far more complicated than that,” he continued. “But when you’ve had one part of the population that is designated as warriors and another part that is designated as something else, I think that disparity begins to establish a psychology that, in some cases, led to that environment. I have to believe that the more we can treat people equally, the more likely they are to treat each other equally.”

A Pentagon report released earlier this week shows a sharp and consistent increase in violent sexual crimes in the military since 2006.

“As secretary of defense, I know that opening more opportunities for our most qualified men and women in uniform strengthens our ability to fight and to win the nation’s wars,” Panetta said Thursday at a Martin Luther King Jr. remembrance event.

Panetta compared the expansion to racial integration and repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“Every person in today’s military has made a solemn commitment to fight and, if necessary, to die for our nation’s defense,” Panetta said Thursday morning. “We owe it to them to allow them to pursue every avenue of military service for which they are fully prepared and qualified.”