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The Marine Corps plans to soon assign a female infantry officer to a combat unit, a historic first, following her anticipated graduation from the service’s grueling Infantry Officer Course, service officials said Thursday.

The lieutenant and her male colleagues completed a three-week combat exercise that includes live fire at the service’s training center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., on Wednesday, the service said in a statement released Thursday after The Washington Post first reported the news. That marked the final graded requirement in the 13-week course, which is widely seen as some of the toughest training in the military, and typically sees about 25 percent all students washing out.

The woman is the first of three dozen women who have attempted the course to pass. She is expected to lead a platoon of about 40 infantry Marines in a service that is often seen as the most resistant to full gender integration in the military. It has grappled this year with a scandal in which more than a 1,000 current Marines and veterans were investigated for sharing photographs of nude female colleagues online.

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U.S. Marines in the Infantry Officer Course conduct fast-rope training near Yuma, Ariz., on March 26, 2015. (Lance Cpl. Jodson B. Graves/ Marine Corps)

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For the first time, the Marine Corps plans to have a female infantry officer among its ranks

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