New Army Physical Fitness Test

[USMCGrunt]

An interesting article on a new Army physical fitness test.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/magazine/army-physical-fitness-test.html

Very interesting to read about the history of this testing and where it will now be going.

One quote caught my eye: "The scoring scale, not yet finalized, is expected to make no age or gender distinctions. Passing scores will vary based on a soldier’s specific job or unit and its physical demands."

Perhaps the Army is big enough to tolerate the outcome, but can you envision an Army where you have combat fitness levels vs admin fitness levels. It seems you would lose the ability to transfer manpower where the needs might be.

Imagine this future rewrite of "Saving Private Ryan"... Captain Miller finds Corporal Upham in the rear HQ area and learning he speaks German tells him to join his squad for the search of Private Ryan. Upham, weighing in at 250 lbs, fails to make it one day into the cross-country march falling out due to the physical strain of walking cross country. Somehow, the story just isn't the same.

 

[emwvmi01]

An interesting article on a new Army physical fitness test.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/magazine/army-physical-fitness-test.html

Very interesting to read about the history of this testing and where it will now be going.

One quote caught my eye: "The scoring scale, not yet finalized, is expected to make no age or gender distinctions. Passing scores will vary based on a soldier’s specific job or unit and its physical demands."

Perhaps the Army is big enough to tolerate the outcome, but can you envision an Army where you have combat fitness levels vs admin fitness levels. It seems you would lose the ability to transfer manpower where the needs might be.

Imagine this future rewrite of "Saving Private Ryan"... Captain Miller finds Corporal Upham in the rear HQ area and learning he speaks German tells him to join his squad for the search of Private Ryan. Upham, weighing in at 250 lbs, fails to make it one day into the cross-country march falling out due to the physical strain of walking cross country. Somehow, the story just isn't the same.

My understanding is that it won't work like that and actually levels bubbles a bit more. The standard for any Soldier assigned to an infantry organization will be the organizational (infantry) not MOS standard. So the intel or personnel Soldier will be held to that level. I think more importantly the test changes a very aerobic oriented fitness culture to a more functional fitness culture. That doesn't mean I think the test is infallible or doesn't have pitfalls but I like the idea that we will ask our Soldiers to do some different things that will require a little more effort than the current APFT. Either way the current test means when you go look for Corporal Upham his level of fitness is evaluated on two criteria his/her gender and age. The new test will normalize both those into a single standard of met or not met.

 

[USMCGrunt]

Thanks for the clarity @emwvmi01 - appreciate the insight.

The Marines are currently doing both a PFT and a Combat Fitness Assessment. Its clear that both branches are searching for the right measure of fitness and capability.

 

[Casey]

My understanding is that it won't work like that and actually levels bubbles a bit more. The standard for any Soldier assigned to an infantry organization will be the organizational (infantry) not MOS standard. So the intel or personnel Soldier will be held to that level.

Where did you read this? Just curious, because everything that I've read or been told about this test has it being divided into the light/moderate/heavy categories based on the MOS of the position you are filling. So if you are filling an intel slot, you will be held to your branch's category which will end up being light/moderate whenever they finally publish the final results even if you are in an infantry BCT. If you were a branch detail intel officer filling an infantry slot, you will be held to the infantry standard (heavy) because you're serving that role.


I have many thoughts on this test. I like the premise behind it and breaking the current culture of being functionally fit, not just good runners, and I love the idea of getting rid of gender based standards because I believe strongly that people work to the standard you put out for them. Lower standards, they're going to work for that because that's all you're asking of them. That said, this test is very time and equipment intensive. I don't see it easily being fielded across the Army. For example, where I'm currently stationed, my unit doesn't even have a real gym. There's only my battalion as we aren't co-located with our higher HQ, and we own none of the facilities we live on our half mile strip of an airfield that we call home. We might be able to squeeze out the space to store the equipment necessary to test the battalion the once a quarter or whenever we decide to shut down the battalion to field this test based on the number of graders, space, equipment, and training required for graders, but we're not setting any of our Soldiers up adequately by resourcing the time, space, or equipment to prepare prior to the test to make sure we do this safely. And we're active duty so we're doing a lot better than what a lot of Guard and Reserve units are going to be running into.

Also the initial cut for how they decided what category each MOS falls into confuses me. The RLO's and WO's in my branch (Aviation) that are part of a crew, theoretically will be held to the heavy standard which I don't necessarily agree or disagree with. There's a lot of scenarios where if **** gets real, pilots need to be able to evade and have extremely high endurance to survive. If we don't break all of our old WO's that are hanging around and have all the experience in the branch in the process, the culture change could be really good. That said, my crew dogs are tasked to the moderate category. These are the folks who do the daily heavy lifting 90% of the time and serve as part of the crew that if we go down will be evading along side of me.

 

[THParent]

I read the thread title - then who the OP was - and expected something with more comedy.
Thread fails to deliver the funny.