THE REAL STORY OF TEAM LIONESS THAT INSPIRED TAYLOR SHERIDAN'S THRILLER


By bburbridge
After completing a 10-day training exercise, the Marines are qualified to become Lionesses and search Iraqi women, which the male Marines are unable to do. Special Ops: Lioness is a fictional account of this real-life team.

The Paramount+ show Special Ops: Lioness developed by Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has just recently released its pilot episode "Sacrificial Soldiers." This spy thriller follows covert spies including Cruz Manuelos (Laysla de Oliveira) and Lioness station chief Joe (Zoe Saldaña) as they are deployed to trouble spots across the world on CIA missions. The show is a fictional sequel and expansion of a real-world program called Team Lioness that was in place from 2003-2004 and has evolved into what we know today as female engagement teams. So where does the history stop and the fiction begin in this new series?Related read: Taylor Sheridan Is Taking on the Military World With New Spy Thriller

The Real Team Lioness

In the early 2000s many US troops were stationed in the Middle East following the attacks on 9/11. Units were aiming to remove the Taliban from power and establish a democratic form of government in Afghanistan. In order to do that, soldiers had to try and stop any terrorist activities in their tracks. Because of cultural strictures, male soldiers could not conduct searches on women. Using this loophole, terrorists utilized women to transport, smuggle and participate in terrorist attacks. This caused a need for female soldiers to be brought along with their male colleagues for house-to-house searches.At the time, the Department of Defense still had the Combat Exclusion Policy in place which forbid women from participating in ground combat. As the demand for female searches increased, Team Lioness was created. The all female U.S. Marine team was utilized in both Iraq and Afghanistan operations to respect local customs. The team was responsible for gathering intelligence from locals as well as distributing information to local women.The original team members included: Shannon Morgan, Rebecca Martinez (Nava), Jessie Miller, Anastasia Breslow, Ranie Ruthig, Katherine Pendry Guttormsen, Patricia Moreno, Brandi Burns, Cynthia Espinoza, Paula LeBove, Michelle Perry, Susan Paterson, Jennifer Acey, Kayla Downey, Kyla Rasmussen, Jessica Samuels, Laura Shiplet, Margaret Smerdon, and Kimberly White.Today, female engagement teams (FETs) have taken over as the official name for groups of female military personnel taking on gender-suited tasks. Their primary role is to engage with local women when it is otherwise unacceptable for male soldiers to do so.Suggested read: Learning Pashto is Becoming a Skill of the Past for U.S. Troops

The Fictional Special Ops: Lioness

This show expands the Lioness Program past their real-life boundaries to feature the women becoming special operatives. The characters in the show are very highly trained and suited for ground combat, unlike the Marines from the original team who were not trained like their male counterparts in the early 2000s. Another discrepancy between real life and the streaming TV show is that the Special Ops Lioness Team’s primary function is actually different. Team Lioness was tasked with identifying women who present as threats and might be involved in terrorist activities whereas the streaming special ops team is directed to stop threats from within the terrorist group on secret missions.The last main difference is that the show establishes that the Lioness program as long-running yet the program died out in 2004 and was changed to become the FETs as they are today. The first two episodes of the series just aired on Paramount+ on July 23rd while the rest of the season will be be released with an episode each Sunday. It is yet to be seen what the impact of this new addition of the Sheridan-verse will be.Read next: A SEAL Team 6 Movie About Adam Brown Is Coming, But at What Cost?


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