The Pentagon published new army fitness test regulations on Aug. 31, replacing its 2022 policy and setting two fitness tests a year for active-duty troops. Combat arms troops will have to meet male-based standards on their regular service tests, while National Guard and Reserve members will be tested once a year.
Pete Hegseth and combat arms
Pete Hegseth ordered the services last fall to make sweeping changes to military fitness requirements. In March 2025, he directed them to identify combat-arms specialties and develop sex-neutral, mission-related physical standards, but he also said combat arms jobs should return to “the highest male standard only.”
The new regulations codify that split. Active-duty service members will take their service's regular fitness test and a second assessment aimed at measuring combat readiness, while troops in designated combat arms jobs will be required to take a Combat Field Test. Troops outside combat arms specialties will take a Combat Readiness Test unless a service chooses to use a regular fitness test instead.
Combat Field Tests by service
The regulations list more than 80 occupations as combat arms across the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, with no Space Force jobs included. Each service must build its own Combat Field Test to match Pentagon standards, which leaves the detailed event mix to the branches even as the overall standard is now fixed.
Combat arms troops will be held to male-based standards on their regular service tests and must average 70% across events. Troops in non-combat roles will use sex- and age-based scoring.
Body composition rules
The same policy also changes body composition testing. Active-duty troops will be tested twice annually, National Guard and Reserve members once per year, and all service members must stay below a waist-to-height ratio of 0.55. Anyone who exceeds that ratio will face a service-specific body fat assessment, and those who fail it will be enrolled in a remedial program to meet the benchmarks.
The body composition policy also gives a 12-month exemption from fitness and body composition testing after childbirth, miscarriage or stillbirth, with the option for additional time after that minimum period. For service members whose jobs fall inside the combat arms list, the immediate issue is not whether testing will happen, but which branch's Combat Field Test will define readiness inside a standard that now treats those roles differently from the rest of the force.
