This is an Obama era study. And it sought to make the case for transgender soldiers. Instead it make the case that the whole thing was very unworkable.
The ability to be deployed to war zones or bases around the world is an issue for transgender soldiers who undergo taxpayer-funded sex change operations, according to a study by the RAND Corporation.
The 2016 study was commissioned by the Obama administration, which favored opening the ranks to transgender individuals, and funded by the office of former secretary of defense Ash Carter.
The study found that, on average, transgender troops seeking basic sex-change operations would be nondeployable for 238 days, or 34 weeks out of a year. The figure amounts to 65 percent of one year.
"These constraints typically include a postoperative recovery period that would prevent any work and a period of restricted physical activity that would prevent deployment," the RAND study states.
"We note that these estimates do not account for any additional time required to determine medical fitness to deploy," the RAND study added. "Army guidelines, for example, do not permit deployment within six weeks of surgery."
Now when the left was arguing that there would be no deployment problems, they were touting a RAND study.
This focuses on the sex-change operation period. But there are all sorts of medical problems associated with hormone therapy. So you can see why the military treated transgender like any other health problem requiring too many resources to qualify for recruitment.
While the media has pretended that Obama dismantled the existing policy barring transgender recuitment, but in fact he found a sneaky way to leave it in place with an extended review that would dump the problem in his successor's lap. Now President Trump dealt with it in the most sensible way possible. And the media keeps howling that the military should ignore the very high suicide rate and severe medical issues because social justice comes ahead of military readiness.