Haha yeah I’ve always said the real test is the 12 mile march in 3 hours. If you can’t walk, you ain’t infantry. But the Army, (my ex), in all it’s wisdom wants to measure all this other stuff. I could get on board with a weighted drag and a sprint too but it’s really not necessary.

Wow I am officially old. Link to old ass memes here.

Yeah, we did also practice other ways but it wasn’t a requirement. Our requirements were grinding endurance stuff like pack all your stuff and carry it 12 miles. Then do a running rifle qual. (You’re running until it’s your turn to shoot, or really more like shuffling in this case)

And the women were certainly hard, they just didn’t get the same level of training because civilians couldn’t handle the thought of them fighting. Which is ridiculous. They ended up on the front lines anyway, just less prepared.

Yup. Every soldier needs to be able to fight. The last 20 years has seen enemies actively avoid attacking combat arms units and going after traditionally non combat units wherever possible. That and the ability to press anyone into the frontline is why everyone needs to be able to pass the test.

Also, to make things even more interesting, combat units already hold their soldiers to a soft standard that’s higher than non combat units. You won’t get discharged for not meeting it but you will do extra exercises, get held back on promotions, and not go to schools for additional skills. If they thought their women weren’t making the standard they literally just wouldn’t promote them, and they’d highly encourage them to change jobs.

I’m not going to down vote you over it because most people outside the military don’t know. But the Army just spent 10 years making a fitness test that more closely resembles combat tasks. Hegseth is not saying this in good faith.

That’s good for a few paychecks in the black couch industry…

They still only have 20 percent of the country. After years. At this rate they will run out of people before Ukraine runs out of territory.

Europe has 450 million people. It will be easier for them than Russia with 146 million people. Stop spreading FUD.

As we all know, repeatedly drafting several divisions worth of men is a sign you’re winning the war…

Oh the current standards in the US military are absolutely enough to make sure women can carry their load. Hegseth is a massive misogynist who believes women shouldn’t be in combat for all kinds of unscientific reasons.

Unconscious person in a building gets dragged out. But your gut feeling is right. A fighting unit needs 3 times the people behind it keeping it going. And units already routinely send the people they don’t want to use on the front line to fetch food and whatnot for everyone else.

Because standards are first and foremost about maintaining a healthy force. Then they find a number that allows for being healthy and operating in combat. That’s the minimum and you get points for going above that, and discharged for not meeting it. I guarantee you they aren’t keeping women around as a DEI thing where they’re only equal on paper.

You forgot step 4.5, starve and under train 90 percent of your military while a super loyal 10 percent get the best training and rations in a Republican Guard.

The Infantry already has a soft standard of scoring higher than minimum. You meet that or you get extra PT, no school slots, no promotions, and may even get transferred out of combat units. But also we’ve seen guys that did 180 (the minimum in 2003) operate perfectly fine in combat. This canard that combat arms needs more than a file clerk is just being used to exclude women. The minimum is actually high enough to operate in combat. Units are doing the higher soft standard because it’s a way to operate at a higher level. But they will deploy someone doing a 180 on their test and put them in a squad that’s fighting in a city after an 8km foot movement. Heck we would rather someone who scored the minimum but can walk with their gear than someone who scored higher but didn’t have that walking endurance.

We already have a gender neutral standard. Walk 12 miles in under 3 hours with gear and shoot at least 30/40 targets on the rifle range. If you can carry your load, shoot, and communicate, then you’re going to be an effective combat soldier. Everything after that is promotion points and being healthy.

The general fitness test has never been about combat. It’s been about keeping the force healthy. It’s scored by age and gender because it’s used in promotions and deciding school slots; so it’s desirable to make sure your scores reflect your effort and level of fitness compared to a similar cohort. The combat arms branches have been asking for a gender and age neutral minimum but after a decade or so of research it’s been clear that such a test is easily replaced by a different minimum score for select units. It’s literally just +25% at any age/gender point in the graph and then having them walk 12 miles in under 3 hours with a rucksack.

It’s not even bending the rules. Unless you make gender a specific disqualifying thing. The standard for combat is not and never has been to be an Olympic athlete. Some women routinely score higher than some men on the Army Physical Fitness Test. What Hegseth’s quotes tell me is they’re going to go on a quixotic quest to find a minimum score that no woman can meet. However that’s going to disqualify a large group of men as well, and require the men that remain to work out multiple times per day instead of train necessary combat tasks.

In short, this administration has no clue what constitutes fighting shape in the military.

This is one of those things that really depends on how it’s implemented. If they just abolish the female scoring column and force everyone to use the male scoring column then there are so many more questions. Will women be judged 1 to 1 against men? or will promotion boards develop an idea of where women should score on the male column? Are they going to get rid of age too and just score everyone as if they were 18 still? Is this going to be a new test for all services?

PT tests have already been undergoing a lot of changes recently. And the one thing that combat arms troops have asked for is simply a score one must meet to be in a combat unit that isn’t age or gender scaled. The minimum we would ask of someone in such a unit, such as marching 12 miles in 3 hours with a standard rucksack. This would be separate from the general test which is scaled and meant to make sure we maintain a physically healthy force.

I don’t think that’s what fuckhead and company have planned though.

All entry-level and sustained physical fitness requirements within combat arms positions must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation and the readiness needed to confront any adversary

This tells me they want to change the general physical fitness test in combat units, the same test used to promote people, decide who goes to schools, and can lead to being discharged if you continually fail it. This is not what we asked for. For those unaware the military has been working on overhauling physical fitness tests to more closely resemble combat tasks for nearly a decade now. This has been a measured and science based project until now. And the part that tells me it isn’t going to be that anymore is when the Secretary of Defense believes he knows what the operational demands of any specific combat unit are. And says this like it hasn’t been what the military has been doing.

And before some keyboard warrior comes through here talking about upper body strength to carry wounded people under fire you should know that 20 plus years ago in Infantry Basic Training we were told you don’t do that. You make the area safe and then you roll their ass onto a stretcher, you tie them down and literally drag them out. And since then we’ve gotten much better drag stretchers because that is by far the preferred method to get casualties to a vehicle. We’ve also had women in frontline units for over a decade now. Even in 2003 while they were officially banned, we brought their units to the frontline because we needed them. Even in a peer to peer combat posture. As a combat infantry veteran I would far far rather have a woman in my patrol that has been trained to work with us because we’ve recognized it’s something we need; than I would have a woman that I need but also have to train under fire because we put our heads in the ground to satisfy some stupid fucking civilian idea of machismo.

It’s also super dangerous to let them get away with. These guys were fast deported with no due process. If they can do it to them, they can do it to anyone, no matter their citizenship.

Bullshit they can’t get them back. They’re paying for their detention there. Which means they’re still in control of it. El Salvador wants more business, and they aren’t stupid. They’d send one back to keep Trump sending them hundreds.