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Veteran
Hegseth Has Ordered a Combat Standards Review. It's Unclear How It Might Apply to All the Services.
03/31/25
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday ordered a sweeping review of military fitness standards for combat roles -- but before the Pentagon can tighten requirements, he wants clarity on which jobs to raise the bar for.
It's a move that underscores Hegseth's broader push for higher standards in the military, but also one that reflects the long-running debate over gender integration in the ranks.
Before the Pentagon can raise the bar, he argues, the military must first define what, exactly, constitutes a combat role -- a question that has long defied simple answers. On Sunday, he directed the services to effectively inventory what they consider to be conventional ground combat roles, special operations and other unique roles such as divers that may warrant more demanding fitness standards.
"I am directing the secretaries of the military departments to develop comprehensive plans to distinguish combat arms occupations from non-combat arms occupations," Hegseth wrote in a memo. "This effort will ensure that our standards are clear, mission-focused, and reflective of the unique physical demands placed on our service members in various roles."
Each of the services has 60 days to submit reports to Hegseth's office, at which point he will decide the next steps.
At the center of Hegseth's push is a familiar talking point: gender-neutral fitness standards for combat arms. That potential shift has served as something of a policy North Star for the defense secretary, who served in the National Guard and as a Fox News host.
"We need to have the same standard, male or female, in our combat roles," Hegseth declared in a video posted to the social media platform . "Soon, we'll have nothing but the highest and equal standards for men and women in combat."
Officials at the Pentagon told Military.com that the memo's push to increase standards for what Hegseth sees as close combat roles will consider physical fitness, body composition and even grooming standards.
Hegseth had already put all three of those areas under a broader review earlier in March with another memo.
However, officials did not immediately answer questions about whether the move was an effort to push women out of combat roles.
Hegseth has repeatedly disparaged female service members and said that he doesn't believe they should serve in combat. In a podcast weeks before his nomination, he said that he was "straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles."
Yet, defining combat roles has proven more complicated than it sounds.
In 2022, after more than a decade of debate, the Army formally adopted the Army Combat Fitness Test, or ACFT, which was originally conceived as a job-specific assessment with tailored requirements for different military occupations. However, that plan was abandoned when the service determined that mapping physical standards to occupational specialties was too complex.
One soldier may hold an infantry designation but be assigned to a non-combat role like recruiting, while another may work in an administrative role in a front-line unit. Gender-neutral standards, once central to the ACFT, were also scrapped -- much to the chagrin of some senior Army officials.
Hegseth's memo may cause further complications because it applies an Army-focused approach to other services, particularly the Air Force, Navy and Space Force, which do not have ground combat roles outside of their respective special operations units such as the Navy SEALs.
