ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Army has announced that it will set tougher physical standards. The changes are expected to especially impact women in combat roles. This comes almost a decade after those jobs were opened to female troops, and the new secretary of defense has said women don't belong in combat. WUNC's Jay Price reports.
JAY PRICE, BYLINE: The Army says the changes to the twice-annual physical fitness test comply with a bill Congress passed back in 2023. It mandated tougher minimum standards. But that was only one catalyst.
BOB UNDERWOOD: The history is a bit longer and more complicated even than that.
PRICE: Col. Bob Underwood led the Army-wide review of the fitness standards. He said the changes are part of an evolution that's been going on for decades, including a major new test in 2022.
UNDERWOOD: And we knew from the time that we started rolling out this test....
PRICE: The 2022 test.
UNDERWOOD: ...It was going to change our fitness culture and change the demands on soldiers' time.
PRICE: And so, he said, the Army almost immediately began revisions. Also, he said, obviously, the Army has to comply with policies set by the administration. Last month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered all the services to begin work on gender-neutral physical standards for the combat arms specialties, such as infantry, artillery, armor and special operations. Because Hegseth has said women don't belong in combat, that raised suspicion among female troops and veterans.
EMELIE VANASSE: It's a little exhausting (laughter) to have this conversation again.
PRICE: Emelie Vanasse was one of the first women to graduate from the Army's notoriously difficult Ranger School after it was opened up to them. Now a civilian, Vanasse says she considers any debate over whether women can perform well in combat roles long over. Thousands of women now serve in those jobs.
The test grades soldiers on five activities, including push-ups, a two-mile run and lifting weights. Combat jobs require higher scores. It had been scored differently based on gender and age. For soldiers who aren't in combat specialties, that won't change, but the standards for combat jobs will become gender neutral. Underwood said that might have happened regardless of who was in charge.
UNDERWOOD: We work hard to make sure we meet law and policy. We've been looking at these questions for a long time.
PRICE: For example, he said, the Army ran a gender-neutral trial of the weightlifting part of the test last year. The fact that older troops in combat jobs will still get graded on a curve, though, caught Charley Falletta's eye.
CHARLEY FALLETTA: If the secretary of defense was genuinely concerned about holding all soldiers to the same physical standard, then he would also remove the age norms.
PRICE: Falletta also graduated from Ranger School and was in the first group of gender-integrated women in the Army's armor branch. She led a mortar platoon in Afghanistan. She and Vanasse agree women should meet the same standards as men for combat jobs. But Falletta says keeping age adjustments while removing those for gender suggests the change is less about fairness or readiness and more about placing new barriers in the path of women.
FALLETTA: To me, this looks like policy crafted by older male leaders to insulate themselves from the consequences of their own logic, while applying that logic harshly to younger women in the ranks.
PRICE: Underwood, the Army colonel who helped craft the changes, said keeping the adjustments for age reflects the reality that older troops - male or female - are more likely to be in leadership positions that pose fewer physical demands. Falletta says most women in combat jobs now will be able to pass the revamped test, but inevitably, their scores will fall because they'll have tougher tasks. That's a problem because the test scores are part of how soldiers, especially enlisted troops, are evaluated for promotion. Underwood says the concern is valid and to expect adjustments to help deal with it.
UNDERWOOD: I know that the folks that run promotions in the Army are looking at precisely these kinds of problems.
PRICE: The new Army fitness test will be phased in beginning in June. For NPR News, I'm Jay Price in Durham, North Carolina.
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