Plan to overhaul Army fitness test gets support from House lawmakers | Halek Hossain

 

House lawmakers on Wednesday backed a plan to overhaul Army fitness standards for soldiers on combat duty, likely mirroring plans adopted by senators last week to examine how the services test soldiers to ensure they are ready for the rigors of the battlefield.

The proposal, included in the House Armed Services Committee's markup of the annual defense authorization bill, calls on the Secretary of the Army to "establish gender-neutral fitness standards for military occupational specialties that are higher than non-combat MOSs." Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee approved similar language in their draft authorization bill last week. 

Both committee votes were approved with bipartisan support, despite objections from some Democratic leaders. "It's clear that carrying a 100-pound artillery shell or a 150-pound rucksack or a 200-pound soldier to the top of a mountain is different than using a keyboard," said amendment sponsor Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., during committee debate Wednesday. "At the end of the day, it's about the standards that all Americans who want to serve this country have to meet to win the war. The jobs are different, and so they have to have different standards."

The provision represents the second rebuke in a week for Army leaders, who have spent the past few years tweaking their fitness tests in response to earlier criticism that the events were overly rigorous for service members in support roles.

Army officers began taking their revised Army Combat Fitness Test in March, following an independent review ordered by Congress into testing flaws. All active duty and full-time reserve component soldiers will take the new test this fall, and part-time reserve and guard soldiers will take the test for records starting next April. The current ACFT has been scaled back from its predecessor, which was specifically designed as an age- and gender-neutral test with different values ​​based on whether a soldier's job required "heavy," "significant" or "moderate" physical effort.

After a large number of women were unable to meet those minimum requirements, the Army revised the events and created a new scoring system with different values ​​for age and gender, changing its messaging to describe the ACFT as an advanced fitness test rather than a readiness assessment. . .

But lawmakers said the result was a fitness test that was too broad and did not adequately prepare soldiers for potential battlefield demands. Language included in the authorization bill would require both the development of a new test for "combat MOS" but also for service officers to better define what those jobs are and who should be held to higher fitness standards. The report's language, along with the draft Senate approval bill, moves beyond Army fitness tests to include more tests by all services requiring them. The senators included language requesting that the Defense Department bring a list of close-combat jobs and briefings on their physical requirements to Congress.

That could force changes across the services in the future, though the current proposals only apply to the controversial Army test. The move would apparently support DoD guidance from March that requires the services to ensure their fitness programs "meet occupationally-specific, job-relevant physical requirements for physically-demanding career fields."

The Army currently has job-specific fitness standards in its Occupational Physical Assessment Test, or OPAT, but those are considered minimums for early entry into the career field. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., led opposition to the measure, arguing that military officials "know more than our committee about what standards are needed to meet their requirements."

"It basically takes away that flexibility on anything," he said.

But for now, both chambers are forcing changes to the test.

Both chambers must approve their separate versions of the bill before they can begin negotiating a compromise measure. That work is expected to extend into the fall.

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has been based in Washington, D.C. since 2004. Covers, focuses on military personnel and veterans policy. His work has garnered numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk Award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism Award and the VFW News Media Award.

Davis Winkey is a senior reporter covering the military, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis on how the Cold War-era Department of Defense influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.