The Military Is Rolling Out New 'Sex-Neutral' Testing Standards. Here Are All The Moves.

Yahoo

29-04-2025

This week, the U.S. Army announced its plans for an updated fitness test that requires men and women in combat positions to meet the same physical standards. In the past, men and women in combat roles had to meet gender-based fitness standards.
The new Army Fitness Test (AFT) is 'designed to enhance soldier fitness, improve warfighting readiness, and increase the lethality of the force,' according to a press release from the Army. 'The change reflects the Army's continued focus on building a physically ready force capable of meeting operational demands in austere environments,' the release said.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth does not think that women should be in combat roles in the military. 'I'm straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,' he said on The Shawn Ryan Show in November. 'Hasn't made us more effective. Hasn't made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.'
In his book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, Hegseth also wrote that 'women cannot physically meet the same standards as men.'
'Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,' he continued, as reported by the Associated Press. 'We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.'
The 'sex-neutral' testing, which will begin rolling out on June 1, is expected to reduce the number of women in combat roles.
The news is raising a lot of questions about military testing, as well as whether physical differences could prevent men and women from meeting the same standards. Here's what we know.
Meet the expert: Caitlyn Mooney, MD, is a sports medicine physician and assistant professor at Vanderbilt Health.
The revamped test is similar to the existing one, but focuses on the following five events. A RAND Corporation analysis and Army data from about 1 million test records helped guide the new standards, according to the release:
Three-repetition maximum deadlift
Hand-release push-up arm extension (starting from a prone position on the ground, you push your body up into a high plank, then lower your body back to the ground and extend your arms out to a T before returning to the start position; you can't pause or rest on the ground)
Sprint-drag-carry (which involves sprinting, dragging a sled, taking lateral steps, and carrying two kettlebells, for varying distances)
Plank
Two-mile run
Combat soldiers need to score a minimum of 60 points per event and an overall minimum score of 350 under the new standards. However 'combat-enabling' troops need to get an overall minimum score of 300.
Troops who are in active duty have until January 2026 to meet the requirements, and National Guard and Army Reserve members have until June 2026.
Service members who don't meet the standards twice in a row could be removed from the Army.
The existing Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT), which will be replaced by the new AFT test, has a couple different exercise move requirements, and different scoring standards, for men and women. (The new test no longer includes the ball yeet, where you throw a medicine ball over your head backwards, reportedly due to injury risk and its inefficiency in measuring power.)
But the biggest change is that the new AFT test will involve women getting graded on the same scale as men in order to qualify for combat roles. So, for instance, women will need to deadlift heavier and run faster than they did with the ACFT testing scale to meet the measures being used to score the men.
Data suggest this may not encourage gaining more women in the military—or, at least, in combat roles. A 2017 study found that 'gaps in cardiorespiratory and muscular performances between men and women' should be addressed with targeted training programs to help minimize differences between the sexes.
A 2022 study from Rand Corporation also found that women and older members of the military failed the previous fitness test at much higher rates than men and younger service members.
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It's important to point out that this won't keep women from joining the military. But it will likely limit how many qualify for combat roles or for positions that support combat roles. 'There is also the potential for this to eventually apply to combat support roles such as physicians, lawyers, etc., which could mean a shortage in these military professions, even though meeting these standards would minimally affect their job performance,' says Caitlyn Mooney, MD, sports medicine physician and assistant professor at Vanderbilt Health.
'Fitness and readiness are critical for the armed forces, but there is likely an unclear correlation between these fitness tests, performance, and lethality,' Dr. Mooney says. 'Peer-reviewed research has not found a correlation between fitness requirements and combat readiness.'
The reality is, physiological sex differences exist between men and women that often put women at a strength disadvantage compared to men. For example, 'deadlifts are a strength event where women would likely perform, on average, 70 to 80 percent less than men when corrected for body weight,' Dr. Mooney says. 'Additionally, women, on average, weigh less than men, further potentially handicapping their performance.'
Hand-release push-ups, sprint, drag, and carry tasks, and planks are other events where women would, on average, have a harder time meeting standards compared to men, Dr. Mooney says. 'The two-mile run would be a more cardiovascular event, typically having women perform at 80 to 90 percent of their male peers.'
Dr. Mooney says that the limits on a woman's performance are 'multifactorial' due to factor like body size, muscle mass, less muscle distribution in the upper body, and lower levels of hormones like testosterone.
'It is important to reiterate that these specific tasks do not necessarily correlate with the ability to perform in combat,' Dr. Mooney says. 'Additionally, these readiness tasks do not test muscular or cardiovascular endurance, which are likely more critical in prolonged combat settings, and primarily test power and forceful maneuvers.'
Dr. Mooney points out that the gap between women and men 'shrinks' with longer-distance endurance events. 'Women would be more likely to perform better with flexibility and endurance, which are not tested, and thus, this test likely would be biased against women,' she says. 'Given that women, on average, perform the selected tasks at a lower capacity than men, fewer women in the armed forces will likely meet these qualifications than men.'
But these changes may also make military recruitment, as a whole, even tougher, Dr. Mooney says. 'There have been ongoing issues with the military's recruitment as fewer people meet the health and fitness standards required,' she says, due to rising rates of obesity, sedentary behavior, and metabolic disorders. With these ongoing recruitment issues, I would worry that changing the AFT to be gender-neutral would further restrict the military's ability to recruit young, fit individuals to combat roles where they likely would be otherwise qualified to function.'
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