Elaine Donnelly dismisses the description of her activities as a crusade. "I just write a little," she says.
    "A little" may not be quite the suitable phrase. In a whirlwind of newsletters, faxes and opinion articles issued from her Livonia in-home office, Donnelly is a writing machine.
    Her Center for Military Readiness has become a formidable adversary of those in the military, Congress and the feminist movement who want to send American women into combat.    Among top military brass, who have come under tremendous political pressure to advance women into command positions in combat specialties, Donnelly is a major annoyance. Among women in the armed forces and the feminist movement who are dedicated to the concept, she is a threat to gender equity.
    But there is also substantial evidence that among many veteran officers, who speak publicly only at risk of their careers, she has become something of a hero.
    "The issue of women in combat is now the acid test, the fulcrum of activism in regard to the military," Donnelly says. "You don't cross the feminists if you want a future. That's a career-killer in today's armed forces, ever since Tailhook."
    She is also in the process of being sued for libel by a U.S. Navy pilot, one of two women trained to fly the F-14, a carrier-based fighter. The other one, Lt. Kara Hultgreen, was killed in October 1994 when her plane crashed while attempting to land on the carrier Lincoln.
    Donnelly insists it was not engine failure, the official position of the Navy, but pilot error that was responsible for the crash. Through military sources, she obtained training reports that she says indicate Hultgreen was pushed through the program despite a performance rating that would have washed out a male candidate.
    In a letter forwarding that information to Sen. Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Donnelly indicated that a similar low rating was given to the other pilot, whom she referred to as "Pilot B."
    That woman, Lt. Carey Dunai Lohrenz, was subsequently taken off carrier duty. She is suing the Navy for sexual discrimination, as well as Donnelly.
    "All these (Donnelly) actions have the effect of working to exclude women in the armed forces from a career path to top command," says Patricia Ireland, president of the National Association for Women (NOW.) "They also reinforce the stereotype that women are weak, inferior and in need of protection."
    "This is the core issue within the military right now," says New York-based writer Stephanie Gutmann, who wrote a cover story on the issue for the New Republic in February. "Those on active duty and retirees, both men and women, are passionate in their opposition to women in combat.
    "Their feeling is that the top brass has turned its back on the ranks and capitulated to a group of civilians who don't know what they're talking about. Every study has come back indicating that women do not want to serve in combat, that this is being pushed by a small group of goofy university ideologues who represent almost no one.
    "But if you oppose them, they label you a 'biological determinist' and accuse you of believing in inherent sex roles. And they have persuaded the military that if there are any problems with these programs, deny them."
    Donnelly claims widespread support within the military. She shows a recent letter from a two-star admiral (with identity crossed out) who claims to have been on the Lincoln the day after Lt. Hultgreen died. He says he viewed the taped rerun of her landing and has no doubt the crash was a result of pilot error.
    "The situation was caused by the pilot, and her unfortunate attempts to correct the difficulty simply made a bad position deadly," he wrote. "In short, she took a lease on the farm in training, then 'bought it' that day. This is not a matter of political correctness, but a simple issue of survival."
    He sent along a $500 contribution to Donnelly's defense.
    But a former resource sponsor for Naval aviation training, who now works in private industry in the Detroit area, disputes Donnelly's interpretation of Hultgreen's training record. Although he testified to Congress about this case, he also wishes to remain anonymous.
    "Some people take longer than others to pass the standard," he says. "Some male pilots took more than Lt. Hultgreen, some took less. Of course, this was a highly visible thing and received closer scrutiny. It was metered because it was of interest to so many people. We wanted to get women out front in this effort. But that is far different from saying that she was given special consideration.
    "The Navy would not do that. Landing on a carrier at night is the most demanding, most stressful flying you will ever do in your life. You can't let a person out whom you would not trust with your life. Eight out of nine male pilots could not have recovered from the situation in which Lt. Hultgreen died."
    Donnelly, the mother of two grown daughters, came to this role through her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s.
    It was her fear then that the ERA would be interpreted as making women eligible for the military draft.
    Donnelly's interest in military issues deepened subsequently while serving a three-year term ("I was the token conservative") as an appointee of President Ronald Reagan on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. She also was a member of a presidential commission to study whether women should be assigned a combat role in the armed forces and was a clear voice in opposition on its final report.
    "I want to make it clear that I am definitely not opposed to women taking a leadership role in the military," Donnelly says. "But not in combat. What infuriates me is that the women who are pushing the hardest for this have little concern for the enlisted women who will have to pay the price. This is simply careerism for a few well-connected female officers.
    "I think we are looking at two issues here. First, what does sending women into combat tell us about what kind of people we are? Are we really ready for this as a nation, as a culture? In prisoner-of-war training exercises, which are like someone coming at you with a fire hose, it has been shown repeatedly that males can be broken down if they think women soldiers are being sexually assaulted. In combat situations, they will show greater concern for protecting female soldiers.
    "That's the way they have been brought up. Do we really want to change that? Do we really want to desensitize the entire American male population toward women? Because that's what it will take. Nothing less. In the Israel Defense Forces, they use women as trainers for male soldiers. But they never send them into combat. Because they saw the demoralizing effect it had when women's bodies were desecrated in their war for independence. The Israeli officers I spoke to can't understand why we'd even be debating such a thing."
    The second issue for Donnelly is military preparedness. She asks if this country is sacrificing unit cohesiveness by waiving the laws of biology; the probability that women in their 20s will get pregnant in the middle of military campaigns and that the impulse for healthy young men and women to have sex is heightened in tense, emotional situations.
    "More than that, though," Donnelly says, "is the question of whether the military has adopted the position that excellence is optional. That it is a social laboratory rather than a fighting force, and other concerns must take a back seat to gender equity.
    "The women who want this make a big issue of the high-tech nature of modern war, that it isn't fought in the trenches with machine guns and bayonets. So upper body strength isn't important anymore. But they still have to carry that high-tech equipment into the field, and the backpacks weigh 80 pounds or more. The weight of a combat soldier's equipment hasn't changed much since the army of Julius Caesar. Eighty pounds still weighs 80 pounds no matter what the feminists would like you to believe."
    Both Donnelly and Gutmann also have compiled evidence that leads them to argue that a double standard is being imposed on training exercises and that women are passed on with a far less rigorous standard than men.
    Quoting a U.S. Marine recruiter, Gutmann wrote: "Invariably the guys went down to Officer Candidate School with a near-perfect physical score while the women just cleared the minimum -- even after using what the brass calls gender norming. For example, in the Marines fitness for women is tested with a flexed arm hang instead of pull-ups, half the number of sit-ups and a slower run."
    The belief that gender-norming was affecting the quality of America's military readiness led Donnelly into the Kara Hultgreen case and her legal problems. The lawsuit is being pursued by a Colorado-based organization called "Women Active in Our Nation's Defense, Their Advocates and Supporters." The group was founded by a friend of former U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, a leading advocate of women in combat.
    "It's no fun having papers served on you and having to raise $250,000 for legal defense," Donnelly says. "But if they want to pursue this, I can't wait to get into open court and bring the testimony about these training records before the public.
    "To me, the military has bought into what I call the Amazon myth -- that women can hardly wait for the chance to get into combat if the men would only let them. Movies like Courage Under Fire may be effective drama, but they're just untrue. Women were not assigned to combat situations in the Persian Gulf War.
    "A majority of women say they would leave the military if asked to take a combat role. That's where the truth is."