Nearly a decade in the making, new Army PT test is finally starting…We hope

| March 23, 2021

The Army is finally, after EIGHT years of development and at least three re-writes (the most recent being last fall when Congress intervened), is ready to put the new Army Combat Fitness Test into use come 1 April. The Rand Corporation (and/or other defense contractors) has come out very well in this.

Army Times reports;

Soldiers will start taking the third version of the new, but delayed, Army Combat Fitness Test on April 1 as part of an effort to gather data for a Rand Corporation study on how the test will impact different demographics across the Army.

Though soldiers will begin taking the third version of the ACFT in the coming weeks, their scores will not count against them until April 1, 2022.

The third version of the test locks in the plank as an optional replacement for the leg tuck, which was considered by many to be the hardest of the six test events.

The third version also lifts job-specific standards for soldiers and codifies a scoring system that takes into account physiological differences between men and women, according to Army leaders who spoke with reporters Monday.

“We don’t foresee any more adjustments, especially this year,” said Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston. “The most important thing is, we need to take the test and put it in the training management system so we have data.”

The changes come after the latest defense budget bill included a provision that halted the ACFT pending an independent study to determine whether it would hurt recruitment and retention in critical jobs.

The new version of the test is intended to gather data for that study and allay concerns that it will negatively impact the careers of women soldiers.

The concept we’re going to evaluate over the next year will place everyone that passes the ACFT into an individual performance category based off of how well they score relative to their gender.

Thanks to Jeff LPH 3 for getting us the latest update on this.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, Army News, Guest Link

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Sapper3307

Equality achieved!

Wireman611

You mean equity, there fixed it for ya.

26Limabeans

“based off of how well they score relative to their gender”

Exacty!

A good test would be pole climbing with leg gaffs.
Signal Corps thing. Strong Catholic child bearing hips could
be an adavantage.

SFC D

I don’t think Signal even teaches that anymore. But you’re not wrong, I had some female cable dawgs that could outclimb the men. Lower center of gravity makes them less tippy. It’s not sexist, it’s physics.

Claw

leg gaffs = 4240-00-273-9668 (Climber’s Set, Tree and Pole)

Dropped out of the supply system as an active stocked item effective 3 April 2001. Special order to GSA item now./smile

Sapper3307

Had a set in my platoon engineer box, with tree and pole spikes. I let a few LT’s hug the pole and get the splitter ride,

STSC(SW/SS)

April 1 aye. The joke is on us.

Slow Joe

#Cancel ACFT

Green Thumb

Word.

Anonymous

Hooah!

FuzeVT

If congress is getting involved in your fitness test creation, it’s time to just eliminate the whole concept. Say everyone passed because they are all equal. That is the only reason congress would get involved right? “‘SOME’ people weren’t being represented fairly” or an equivalent, yes?

KoB

Equal Opportunity does not always equate to equal ability. Besides the obvious physical appearance differences between the TWO (2) sexes, there are physical ability differences. It ain’t rocket surgery to figure out. Ma Bell was one of the most “equal opportunity” Companies out there. When she opened up the outside plant jobs to the girls, the physical requirements remained the same. Girls had to climb the same size/height of poles, be able to do the work required on a set of hooks, and lift the same manhole cover with a hook, just as the guys did. And the smaller guys had to do the same as the bigger guys, no exceptions. If you couldn’t pass the test to do the work, you didn’t get the job.

Lowering the requirements will just mean a rise in the number of body bags that will get filled in a combat situation.

penguinman000

“Equal opportunity does not always equate to equal ability.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

I’m still struggling to understand what fair and equitable have to do with winning a war?

11B-Mailclerk

What does “winning a war” have to do with Progtards?

-they- certainly are not thinking of winning any wars. Not against any external threats, anyway.

Jeff LPH 3, 63-66

How did the Greatest Generation Army do it during WW2 if all the past PT’s are considered unfair to certain Soldiers????

Ex-PH2

I thought PT was not about “feels good” but about physical fitness. Not everyone has equal strength or endurance, and why it is now OK to cheat so that “everyone wins and gets a cookie” is beyond me.

And that whole business about ‘feels good’ fails to take into account that sometimes the least likely people can do the most heroic things.

SGT Ted

I’ve been told by all the Correct Woke Gender Weirdos that there’s no physiological differences between males and females when it comes to sports.

Kinda weird that they’d adjust for that in this test, right?

11B-Mailclerk

Ask them to name any XX MMA fighters competing in weight class against XY.

Expand it a bit. Give it up to a 50 pound delta. Any takers?

200 pound female MMA versus 150 pound male.

Eric (The OC tanker)

Shit, Just bring back the 5 event PT test from the mid 70’s. Us old farts have ‘fond’ memories of such things. Also bring back the ‘old’ conditioning drills. My absolute favorite was exercise 6 conditioning drill 1. “Starting position, Post! In cadence exercise!

Green Thumb

Looks to be a few fat bodies in the picture at the top as well.

Stacy0311

How about they codify a scoring system that accounts for physiological differences for us geezers who are still serving?

As a 55 y/o male why should I have to score more than a 21 y/o female? I’ve been doing this longer than she’s been alive

A Proud Infidel®™️

I’m betting that this will only last until someone in a higher up appointed position has a bright idea to replace it with!

Anonymous

Wait ’til people start getting hurt doing it…

Veritas Omnia Vincit

So was the old test not delivering mission ready troopers?

Or is this more SJW horseshit to get smaller weaker soldiers past the barriers to admission?

Hondo

My money’s on it being due to the latter, VOV.

But that’s just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

Veritas Omnia Vincit

That’s what I was afraid of…not unlike the smaller weaker members of certain fire departments unable to carry the ladder, or the episode of cops where the two smaller police officers were getting their asses kicked until some local civilians stepped in to help them contain an unruly individual.

In some instances fortunately or unfortunately size and strength matter a great deal…

rgr769

Those factors always matter, even in a gunfight. In between trigger pulling, one needs to be able to drag or pick up a wounded comrade to move him to safety.

Prior Service

As someone that routinely maxed the old test from the time I turned 21 (and the run time dropped from 11:52 to @12:20) and still do, I will say that you have to be much more fit to do well at the new test, and it will deliver more fit troopers.

Anonymous

Well, they were going to had a new PT test after failed attempts to do better no matter what… now, it’s “make it work” vs. political correctness (neither of which bode well).

Anonymous

So, now it’s just like the APFT only more a pain in the ass to give…

Berliner

In my 6 years on Recruiting duty in Chicago, the APFT was “written”.

That still didn’t stop me from running 8.5 miles along the lakefront in the morning from Foster & Marine View Drive to Michigan and South 9th St to work (Chicago AFEES/MEPS). This was followed by reps on the Universal machine by the locker room before changing for work.

Going home I could ride the train or walk if the weather was nice. Some city areas walking it helped to pretend you were “bluetoothing” before that was invented.

11B-Mailclerk

So, either a meaningless test that shows no differences of protected folks, thus protected folks get promoted same as non-protected.

Or

There will be yet again an explicitly different standard for protected folks, so they do far less for the same score, thus protected folks get promoted same as non-protected folks.

They could have kept the old APRT and just left in the double standard. Instead, they came up with a less useable test that takes longer to do, is a bigger PITA to organize and schedule, has more built in argument factors, and still requires an explicit difference double standard to produce the desired score and promotion parity.

Way. To. Go.

Bullets don’t grade on curves.

Andy

I guess the only reason this version is going forward is because Congress approves? If Congress wants to really make a difference, they would just shut the hell up and let leaders be leaders.

Ex-PH2

Smaller? Weaker?

Audie Murphy. 5 ft 5.5 inches tall, weighed 112 pounds.

In an emergency, the human body can do things no one expects, such as a mother literally lifting the front tire of a car off her child, which she could do without the stress included that releases physiological chemistry to make it happen. People can and repeatedly do extraordinary things under stress that they could not do under ordinary circumstances. Happens all the time.

But that is under extreme stress, not something one gets to practice doing. These tests and training platforms are appropriate for training, but there is no way to predict how someone will act under genuine stress.

11B-Mailclerk

Smaller and weaker compared to males, objectively measurable.

There has to be a difference or there would be no reason to change the tests, or the scoring, to get similar results.

Objectively measurable.

Stacy0311

At this moment the E4 Mafia is meeting in Executive Session to determine how they can manipulate the ACFT new scoring system in accordance with the military’s new transgender policies.

I speak as a former member of the LCPL Underground