Reports say that the Pentagon will announce tomorrow that it is lifting the ban on women in combat.
The move may allow women to serve for the first time alongside their male counterparts in infantry troops as battlefield medics, pilots and in other dangerous roles.
The move, however, will still stop short of one last part of the ban.
Defense officials said they don't expect the change to result in women being allowed to serve as infantry troops on the front lines in direct combat situations.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to lay out a plan for studying the expansion of service by women in military specialties from which they are now excluded according to the Wall Street Journal.
"The time has come to rescind the direct combat exclusion rule for women and eliminate all unnecessary gender-based barriers to service," Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a January 9 memo to Mr. Panetta.
The WSJ reports that the announcement is an acknowledgment that women on modern battlefields already are in the fight—and that military rules need to be updated to reflect current realities of the current-day warzones.
Panetta last February ordered military service chiefs to find ways to expand the role of women.
Should women be used in direct combat situations? Weapon to weapon on the front lines?
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