The Pentagon on Aug. 31 codified new military fitness regulations that replace its 2022 policy and tighten testing across the services. Under the new rules, troops in combat arms jobs must meet male fitness standards on their regular service tests, while active-duty members will take two fitness tests a year.
The change puts a fresh baseline on who is tested, how often they are tested and what counts as passing. National Guard and Reserve members will take one fitness test per year, and all service members must still clear body composition checks, including a waist-to-height ratio below 0.55.
For the first time, the rules also draw a clear line between combat arms and other specialties. More than 80 occupations are now designated as combat arms across the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, while no Space Force jobs are listed. Troops in those combat arms roles will be held to an average score of 70% across events on their regular tests, but non-combat personnel will continue to be scored by sex and age.
The policy reflects directives issued across 2025 into one set of standards, and it lands as the services are being told to build their own Combat Field Test and Combat Readiness Test systems. Active-duty troops will take their service’s regular fitness test plus a second assessment tied to combat readiness, while troops outside combat arms may take a Combat Readiness Test or, if a service chooses, the regular fitness test instead.
That is where the friction sits. The Pentagon is demanding male standards for combat arms troops even as it also directed the services to develop sex-neutral, mission-related physical standards. In March 2025, Pete Hegseth ordered the services to identify their combat-arms specialties, and in December Anthony Tata said the Pentagon would study the effectiveness of integrating ground combat units. The new rules do not spell out which more than 80 jobs are included, leaving the services to turn the policy into practice.
Body composition rules tighten as well. Active-duty troops will be tested twice annually, Guard and Reserve members once a year, and anyone who misses the waist-to-height standard will face a service-specific body fat assessment. If they fail that assessment, they will enter a remedial program to meet the benchmarks. The policy also gives a minimum 12-month exemption from fitness and body composition testing after childbirth, miscarriage or stillbirth, with the services free to set stricter requirements.
What comes next is the harder part: each service now has to decide how to design its Combat Field Test or Combat Readiness Test so the numbers match the mission. The new regulations set the frame, but the real test is whether the services can turn a single Pentagon rulebook into standards that hold up in every branch without collapsing the distinction between combat and non-combat jobs.
