While stressing that sexual assault occurs throughout society, former fighter pilot Martha McSally said "we expect the military to be better."

McSally, the first woman to fly in combat for the US Air Force, made her remarks during a lecture at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, near Washington.

The Republican senator from Arizona spent 26 years in the US Air Force, where she was the first woman to fly in combat.

Last month she told a Senate subcommittee hearing on sexual assault in the military that she had been "preyed upon and then raped by a superior officer."

At Thursday's conference, McSally said that in US military schools, second-year officer cadets are very quickly given responsibility over first-year students, especially on weekends.

"We put 19-year-olds in charge of the 18-year-olds and then we, the adults, leave for the weekend. I never understood that," she said.

"They are teenagers!" she exclaimed, before calling on the directors of the Air Force and Naval Academies as well as the army's West Point officer school to review the practice.

"Take a look at it," she said. "Maybe you have got to do something different."

Thursday's conference on the prevention of sexual assault was the first to bring together the three military academies, as well as delegates from many American universities.

In her Senate testimony, McSally did not reveal who raped her or when it happened, and said she decided only years later to talk about it.

McSally said she considered leaving the Air Force "over my despair" but eventually served until 2010. She commanded a fighter squadron and retired with the rank of colonel.

A Pentagon report in January said the number of reported sexual assaults at America's military academies rose by almost 50 percent over the past two years, despite extensive efforts to combat the problem.