(Pentagon) The strength of our military is rooted in its high standards – they are the foundation of our military’s power projection.
To ensure the U.S. military remains the strongest and most lethal fighting force on the planet, the Secretary of Defense directed the Military Departments to ensure their physical fitness standards support this enduring goal.
This memorandum directs the Military Departments to develop comprehensive plans to distinguish combat arms occupations from non-combat arms occupations.
For more information, click here.
COMBAT-ARMS-STANDARDS (pdf)
For far too long, we have allowed standards to slip. We’ve had different standards for men/women serving in combat arms MOS’s and jobs….
That’s not acceptable, and it changes right now! pic.twitter.com/Zn9OyBew6G
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 31, 2025
Different physical standards for men and women in the U.S. military have existed for a long time. BUT, there were also combat roles that were male-only.
Then, under Obama, all combat roles were opened to men AND women. BUT, different physical fitness standards for men and women…
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) March 31, 2025
“Different physical standards for men and women in the U.S. military have existed for a long time. BUT, there were also combat roles that were male-only.
Then, under Obama, all combat roles were opened to men AND women. BUT, different physical fitness standards for men and women remained.
Today at @DeptofDefense — we fix this. All combat roles are open to men and women BUT they must all meet the same, high standard.
No standards will be lowered AND all combat roles will only have sex-neutral standards. Common sense.”
What People Are Saying:
“GWOT gave us a few examples of women who were thrust into combat roles, resulting in permanent musculoskeletal injuries & infertility while underperforming compared to their male counterparts, but everyone just ignored their stories: https://mcgazette.blogspot.com/2012/07/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created.html”
“@SecDef @PeteHegseth You’ve said women don’t belong in combat. I was an Army Combat Medic in the ’80s & ’90s. AND I AGREE WITH YOU!
We aren’t built like men. We’re not designed to be in battle. Our bodies are, typically speaking, not as strong as men’s. In full gear, soldiers are 100+ pounds heavier than without it. There’s no way I’d be able to carry this kind of weight across the street, much less across a battlefield while dodging bullets, carrying an injured man, and avoiding enemy fighters coming at me! And I’m willing to wager VERY FEW women could.
In what type of society would a FATHER send his DAUGHTER to fight in a war, knowing there’s a good possibility that she would be returning home in a flag-draped box? Mine was in near-panic mode when my unit was on standby at the start Desert Shield. Then came Desert Storm. By the grace of God, my MASH unit wasn’t deployed.
I suppose those on the left, specifically Elizabeth Warren, are okay with sending their daughters to fight in dreadful conditions, unable to call home, unclean, MRI-fed, sleeping wherever/whenever, bodies aching, unsure if they’ll make it out alive. Un-freaking-believable.
Stand strong. We believe in you. 🇺🇸”
“Combat readiness over political correctness.
Pete Hegseth just did what the Pentagon should’ve done years ago:
One standard. One mission. One team.
If you want to serve in a combat role, you meet the standard. Period. Doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, or identify as a damn toaster.
War doesn’t care about your pronouns.
Under Obama, they opened the door but kept the double standards, setting up failure in the name of “equality.”
Today, we bring back real equality:
Same fight = same bar = same respect.
This is how you rebuild a warrior class.
No handouts. No quotas. Just grit, training, and raw capability.”
“In other words, these combat roles, especially in special forces, will remain almost exclusively male, because women can’t pass those same physical standards, which is why they shouldn’t be put in combat roles in the first place. When performance on the battle field determines who lives and who dies, standards fucking matter. Obama de-masculized and weakened our military for years and years after. Enough is enough, it’s time to make us fight ready again, America deserves protection, not woke checklists.”
“This was a highly contentious point of discussion the entire time I wore the uniform (20+ years). It was also one thing we all agreed with 100%. Good to hear it is coming to fruition.”
“As a female veteran, and one smart cookie, I am glad of the differences. Never would I get offended about the jobs I knew I was not qualified for. WHY would I place my brothers and sisters in danger because of insane vanity. I wouldn’t.”
“A return to common sense. Thank you.”
“THIS IS THE WAY. Lowering the bar for certain demographics puts countless lives at risk. Thank you, Secretary Hegseth.”
“One of my biggest gripes during my tine in service was the two tiered PT standards. There needs to be a single standard, and this is a great step in the right direction!”
“Women got men killed in Afghanistan during the FET experiment with 4/4 in Kunar in no small part that they couldn’t hack light infantry work despite 210 APFT scores
Any NCO that spoke out against this was early retired through MEB or chaptered for small issues after OEF XIII
Sir, know there is a 5th column that will fight this tooth and nail, a cancer that will be difficult to remove but must be to preserve the lethality of the force
You are a whitepill in a time that whitepills are needed
Thank you for the hope”
“This will absolutely save lives and bring up moral for the combat ready troops!”
“Decreasing the quality of soldiers on purpose seems like something only an enemy of the US would do 🤔 it’s almost as if they were intentionally making us weak.”
“As a female Marine, I love this!! Thank you for the common sense Defense Secretary Hegseth! Semper Fi.”
“Long overdue. We spent years developing gender neutral for Air Force ground combat career fields that were scientifically proven based on critical tasks, only to have the woke rated leadership shelve them because they were too difficult.”
“During my time in the Corp, the toughest female Marines would get destroyed when grappling with the average male Marine. In combat, biology matters. Common sense isn’t that common.”
“My son is a Marine. Anyone on his 6 I want to be in a physical condition to be as effective as any other marine. And vice versa, this is common sense.”
“Meritocracy rules once more wow.”
“The fitness standards are a joke, even for non-combatants. And I don’t mean we all need to run do 20 pullups and run a 18min 5k. I hate seeing Sailors that look like a bag of donuts in their uniform. It’s embarrassing for them, but more importantly it’s embarrassing for me and everyone else that wears the uniform or has worn the uniform. This is especially prevalent among females, because everyone, including myself is afraid to tell them that their physical standards are shit. Go onto a Navy base exchange and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Get US Army Ranger School squared away. As a former US Army Infantry 1SG , we had to meet the standard. Those women did not meet the standard. I had friends , good friends , who were Ranger Instructors during Obama second term and the Biden term. Those women failed to meet the standard to graduate Ranger School. My buddy was told to get on board and pass them or find another job. 😡he quit. Get it done please. Hoooah”
“Equal standards in combat are like forging swords in the same fire—if one blade’s softer to be “fair,” it snaps when it counts. The enemy doesn’t care about equity; it tests your steel. Lower the bar, and you don’t include—you endanger. War doesn’t grade on a curve.”
“The female needs to be able to carry her buddy out of the way, under direct fire. If you can’t do that, while you and they are loaded down with gear, you have no business being there. I say this as a former POG, and female, that definitely wouldn’t meet the standards of the males. That’s OK.”
“Standards were ruthlessly attacked by lawyers and politicians in the 80s and 90s. Every push-up had to be justified against a specific combat need. Let’s hope they figure it this time. It stands to reason, if men can’t compete in women’s sports because they mostly win, then women cannot effectively compete in combat because they will mostly lose.”
“Equal standards seems reasonable but women have no place in combat arms MOSs.
Every military commander’s job is to minimize distractions in order to complete the mission. There is no greater distraction ever created by God for men than a woman. Pretending that isn’t true is suspending reality.
Also, there have been formal studies on the performance of gender integrated units vs all male units. In *almost all tasks* the all male units are superior performers.
From a 2015 study by the USMC:
-Overall: All-male squads, teams and crews demonstrated higher performance levels on 69% of tasks evaluated (93 of 134) as compared to gender-integrated squads, teams and crews.
-Gender-integrated teams performed better than their all-male counterparts on (2) events.
– Speed: All-male squads, regardless of infantry MOS, were faster than the gender-integrated squads in each tactical movement. The differences were more pronounced in infantry crew-served weapons specialties that carried the assault load plus the additional weight of crew-served weapons and ammunition.
– Lethality: All-male 0311 (rifleman) infantry squads had better accuracy compared to gender-integrated squads. There was a notable difference between genders for every individual weapons system (i.e. M4, M27, and M203) within the 0311 squads, except for the probability of hit & near miss with the M4.
– Male provisional infantry (those with no formal 03xx school training) had higher hit percentages than the 0311 (school trained) females: M4: 44% vs 28%, M27: 38% vs 25%, M16A4w/M203: 26% vs 15%.
– All-male infantry crew-served weapons teams engaged targets quicker and registered more hits on target as compared to gender-integrated infantry crew-served weapons teams, with the exception of M2 accuracy.
– All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty).”
“I lived through the Army ACFT fiasco. The Army wanted to change the APFT for years. They started adding pullup bars near every barracks in the 90’s. 9/11 happened and the Army needed all hands. The PT reforms picked up again as the GWOT wound down. Army knows pullups are directly related to combat performance. The USMC has known this for decades. Army started getting diagnostic data from ACFT pilots. It became rapidly clear from allowing females in Ranger school that single digit percentages of women could do pullups even with significant training. Army changed the ACFT to the “heel hook” abandoned that, and went to the “knee tuck”. Females were around 17% of the force and about half of the females could do 1 single rep. So, in true Army fashion, Army lowered the standard. The current exercise is a two minute plank, which we used to call the pushup event in the APFT. Tldr, women are poorly suited for combat.”
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