we've had several discussions over the years about this abortion of a change in terms of the Army's fitness test of record

perhaps the final version has finally been announced. basically -- they threw in the towel and got the worst of both worlds:

a complicated multi-event test with no bearing on 'combat readiness'

--and--

they dropped the goal of 'gender and age neutral' testing. so women are back to getting the event discounts as the 'weaker sex'

but what happened to 'if they can do the same job as men -- they deserve a spot...' ??

sheesh -- after years of back and forth and likely millions spent on 'analysis'... we get this...


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https://www.armytimes.com/news...-to-scoring-april-1/

Army Combat Fitness Test debuts with major changes to scoring April 1

By Davis Winkie

The Army is moving forward with its long-awaited Army Combat Fitness Test this year, but the service has officially dropped the test’s attempt to set a gender- and age-neutral physical fitness standard — as well as any pretense that it’s formally tied to combat tasks, beyond having “combat” in its name.

The shifts come following an independent review of the test by RAND that Congress ordered in the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill.

Among the test’s changes are:

The ACFT has adopted age- and gender-normed scoring tables, similar to those on the old Army Physical Fitness Test.

The Army, backtracking, now says the test is a “general physical fitness assessment” not intended to predict success on the service’s Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills. That comes after RAND challenged the validity of data from the Army’s 2019 tests at Fort Riley, Kansas, that the service said proved the link.

The leg tuck is no longer an event — the plank, with a newly lowered standard, is the only core event.

A 2.5-mile walk has been added as an alternate aerobic event for troops whose medical profiles prevent them from running.

The ACFT will not immediately impact personnel actions. It has phased implementation deadlines ranging from Oct. 1 of this year to April 1, 2024.

In a Monday media roundtable, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston acknowledged that there was a “conversation” about whether the ACFT’s name was still a good fit. He argued, though, that the name is justified because “in the U.S. Army, we actually — believe it or not — all go to combat.”

The RAND report

In its independent review of some 630,000 ACFT results and the Army’s data and science underlying the test, RAND “highlighted weaknesses” in the Army’s arguments that the test can predict success in combat tasks, according to a copy of the report.

RAND researchers pointed towards a host of “anomalous findings” with the studies and University of Iowa research, including a small sample size of women and a study design that could have “masked” links between individual ACFT events and corresponding combat tasks.

“The leg tuck, for example, was not useful in predicting performance on combat tasks,” explained RAND’s Dr. Chaitra Hardison, the study’s lead author, in the Monday roundtable.

One of the reasons why Congress ordered the review was to determine whether critically short career fields would be disproportionately impacted. Enlisted fields with the highest failure rates, regardless of gender, included animal care, several non-combat medical specialties, cooks, ammunition stock control and human resources.

Additionally, the report’s analysis of around 460,000 soldiers’ ACFT scores revealed that women were failing the new test at alarming rates.

A total of 48% of active duty enlisted women and 28% of active duty female officers could not pass the test. Nearly 60% of enlisted Reserve and Guard women failed the ACFT, as did 51% of female Reserve officers and 43% of female Guard officers.

Hardison explained that “while the pass rate discrepancies alone do not mean the test is flawed, they are especially concerning when there is insufficient validity of evidence to support the test[’s link to combat tasks].”

That left the service “to grapple with a trade-off,” the researchers said in their concluding paragraph.

“Should all soldiers, regardless of age, gender, and MOS, be subject to the same physical fitness standards (which prioritize combat readiness), or should the test and policies be set such that all soldiers have a reasonable chance of passing but not at the same minimum level of physical fitness?” asked RAND.

The Army went with the latter option.

What are the ACFT scoring tables?

The new scoring tables for the permanent version of the ACFT are thus age- and gender-normed, much like the old Army Physical Fitness Test.

New Army Combat Fitness Test grading scales released by the Army ahead of the April 1, 2022, launch date for the official for-record test.

Brig. Gen. Scott Naumann, the Army’s director of training, emphasized that the Army “decided to implement the test as a general physical fitness assessment, as opposed to one that is designed to predict performance on a set of [combat] tasks,” in order “to address evidence shortfalls” with the University of Iowa study.

Linking the test directly to the Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills that all soldiers are expected to perform was one of the key components of maintaining age- and gender-neutral testing. But taking away that link to common soldier tasks made it more difficult to justify gender-neutral standards that resulted in such significant failure rates for women.

In some of the events — the run and the plank — the standard to score 60 points and pass the event was lowered from ACFT 3.0 for all gender and age groups. Other events feature lower minimum standards for women and increased minimum standards for men, such as the sprint-drag-carry and the standing power throw.

Naumann explained that the new scales “were developed...using data from the 630,000 ACFT scores that we’ve collected...historic performance rates from the APFT...and scoring scales from other branches of the U.S. military, particularly for the plank.”

The maximum score for events corresponds to the 96th percentile of performance within a given age and gender cohort, Naumann explained, and the minimums were set at the 5th percentile for each event. One exception is the run, which the general said was “initially set at the third percentile,” but was slowed down for some age groups that had previously been allotted a slower minimum time for the old APFT.

In another change, the Army has added a 2.5-mile walk as an alternate aerobic event for troops who are unable to complete the two-mile run due to a permanent medical profile.

When will the ACFT take effect?

Army officials said Monday that the changes will roll out over time “in a very deliberate manner to ensure that soldiers can train and adjust to the new events and the new scoring scales before we use those for personnel actions.”

That will also give the service time while an NCO-led “chain teach” about the test and its changes works its way down to the lowest levels. Grinston began the chain teach process Monday afternoon when he briefed command sergeants major from around the Army.

This Army-provided graphic explains the implementation timeline for the full ACFT, to include personnel actions.

Soldiers across all of the Army’s components will begin taking the new test as a diagnostic on April 1 — there will be no administrative consequences for failing a test during the initial period, though troops who pass can later opt to have their diagnostic period score become a for-record ACFT, according to an Army Directive signed by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.

Active duty and Active Guard Reserve troops will begin taking the test for-record on Oct. 1, and they will have 6 months to pass an ACFT before it is incorporated into promotion points and used as grounds for kicking soldiers out of the Army beginning April 1, 2023. If they fail during that period, soldiers will be flagged.

For the service’s part-time soldiers, the record testing period will begin on April 1, 2023, and troops will have a year to pass an ACFT, or else they will be flagged until separations come into play for them on April 1, 2024.

Those deadlines will come sooner for other parts of the Army, though — initial military training courses and other professional military education with graduation dates after Oct. 1 will require a soldier to pass the ACFT.

Grinston says the transition to the new ACFT should be smooth for the soldiers out there who have been training for the previous version of the test.

“I do not see any challenges for the active duty [Army] to be ready by Oct. 1 in six months,” the Army’s top NCO said. “We’ve just removed the leg tuck.”

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I am curious whether soldiers can self identify their gender or are biologists used to determine it?

some further comment ... the timing of this

remember when all this was getting discussed a few years ago as we were integrating women into combat roles they had never held before -- infantry etc

there was all this concurrent effort to push the idea -- we'll have this 'gender neutral' criteria that will PROVE these women have earned the right to serve in these combat MOSs. those evil men won't be able to say -- women are weaker -- because gosh darn it -- the standards ARE THE SAME !

well guess what -- women are now serving in those units. that social experiment was 'won' by the left. then SURPRISE !!

the tests / standards are UNFAIR !! too many women failing ! so now we're back to different standards AFTER the Army has opened those MOSs / billets for women...

the left is sly like that. it worked. and are Army is literally the weaker for it...

some of the differences are pretty startling -- to get a top score 100 in the two mile run a 23 year old female only has to run equal to a 53 year old male -- about 15 mins

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^^^Our Country is WEAKER for it...

Unfortunately it’s political.

But still, this final version of the ACFT is still light years better than the APFT, so still a step forward.

Having the same standards for 18 year olds and 45 year olds was just stupid.

I posted about this too in my older thread about it.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Having the same standards for 18 year olds and 45 year olds was just stupid.

I posted about this too in my older thread about it.

Why? Do the demands of combat check birth dates?

It’s sad but at almost 48 I can nearly max the ACFT and out perform almost all men half my age…

I don’t workout all that much either. The test isn’t the problem.

I chuckled when I read this this morning. we did almost every event with the exception of the 2 mile run for PT this morning.

I'm annoyed, because I liked the idea of a gender neutral MOS based standard. Having been an Infantry guy originally, I can tell you that the machine gun doesn't get lighter with age, nor did it seem to get lighter when a Woman picked it up. Expecting everyone with the same job to meet the same standard makes sense to me.

What also seems to be implied, but not specifically mentioned in the article was the elimination of the "sliding Scale". At one point I was briefed that the minimum scores would change based on the averages found through out the Army. Sort of pushing the standard up as the force adjusted to the new standard.

I wasn't surprised by the elimination of the leg tuck. The failure rates among women where very high and the minimum for low intensity MOSs was 1 leg tuck. The plank's adoption wasn't a surprise.

I was surprised by the return of the walk, it had been put out several times that "the walk wasn't coming back". I used to do the walk and my old hit time was 36 minutes now it's 31. So they are still cracking down on the non runners.

On the flip with the adding of the age standard to the run, it's scary how slow you can run and still pass.

The sprint, drag, carry is relevant, dragging a casualty, carrying ammo cans and sprinting because it's hard to hit a sprinting target. the hand release ush up for getting out of the prone to IMT. The medicine ball throw, I can't articulate the exact translation. The deadlift is lifting a casualty or equipment, my server stack case eight around 140-160 pounds so being able to lift them or my part of the two person lift is relevant.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Having the same standards for 18 year olds and 45 year olds was just stupid.

I posted about this too in my older thread about it.

Why? Do the demands of combat check birth dates?

It’s sad but at almost 48 I can nearly max the ACFT and out perform almost all men half my age…

I don’t workout all that much either. The test isn’t the problem.

How many 45 year old active duty in the field M240B gunners have you run into? I am sure a lot more 18 year old ones out there. Combat arms MOS’s seem to be a young man’s/women’s sport. I am sure there are some but, probably an outlier in the stats.

I certainly hope a lack of physical condition doesn’t disqualify us for the next war; that would be embarrassing…

The sprint/drag/carry is a badass event. I have done the ACFT a few times (the first of which wasn't super squared-away), and that event had my lungs and heart confused about whether they were going to explode or collapse. Everyone's experience will vary based on their level of fitness and their level of effort, of course.

The leg tuck was an odd one. It really depended on the person it seemed. It wasn't a problem for me, but some dudes just couldn't do it, and it definitely wasn't an indicator of their level of fitness. The leg tuck is maybe comparable to climbing a rope; anyone who has climbed a rope with other folks will know that some people just can't figure it out.

The test is kind of irrelevant, at the end of the day, I think, in the way most folks consider it. Bad results will be ignored, if the soldier otherwise kicks butt, or used as leverage in getting someone out of a unit, if they're a turd.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Having the same standards for 18 year olds and 45 year olds was just stupid.

I posted about this too in my older thread about it.

Why? Do the demands of combat check birth dates?

It’s sad but at almost 48 I can nearly max the ACFT and out perform almost all men half my age…

I don’t workout all that much either. The test isn’t the problem.

This might be true for you and a few others but father time catches up to all of us sooner or later and there are things people could do at 18 that they can't do as well at 45 which the army recognizes hence the different standards for different ages.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Having the same standards for 18 year olds and 45 year olds was just stupid.

I posted about this too in my older thread about it.

Why? Do the demands of combat check birth dates?

It’s sad but at almost 48 I can nearly max the ACFT and out perform almost all men half my age…

I don’t workout all that much either. The test isn’t the problem.

I have no problem with the 18 year old scores for the Navy version. But having differences for age groups isn't a problem.

Reason being, when factoring in these scores for advancement, if all things are equal, I want points for being 13x more responsible and mature than your average 18-21 year old.

These points count toward advancement, so differentiating does create a fair playing field. Regardless of everyone's push to make everyone equal.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Having the same standards for 18 year olds and 45 year olds was just stupid.

I posted about this too in my older thread about it.

Why? Do the demands of combat check birth dates?

It’s sad but at almost 48 I can nearly max the ACFT and out perform almost all men half my age…

I don’t workout all that much either. The test isn’t the problem.

yes its interesting because they changed the whole 'focus' of the ACFT 'philiosophy'

you can gear a test toward a measurement of 'general level of physical fitness' --OR-- 'combat readiness / ability'

the old PT test sought to measure the former. the 'new' ACFT was supposed to measure the latter and be a 'better' test

but in the end they gave up on that goal -- and just reverted back to a 'general measurement of fitness' with age / sex factored in. but we'll keep the word 'Combat' in it because it sounds better

i do agree its a more 'thorough' test no doubt. but its also significantly more laborious to administer. and i highly doubt its identifying 'Army high performers' who were somehow mis-labeled by the old test. if anything -- its now biased to heavier individuals IMO. no sit-ups, no hanging event, slower run times than the old APFT, shorter more anaerobic events (deadlifts, ball throw)...

i guess i get frustrated also its such a bureaucratic waste (surprise !) -- they've been looking at this for like 7-8 years only in the end to 'dumb it back down'.

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I don’t have a problem with different “scoring,” I was reacting to PA Sigs use of the term “standard.”

The original concept was a minimum standard for passing based on MOS with combat arms being the highest. This wouldn’t have been age or gender based since combat don’t care. A different scale for scoring could have proceeded from there.

I don’t know what the scoring or minimums are going to be now.

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:


I don’t know what the scoring or minimums are going to be now.

if you look at the army times article it has a basic scoring graph. not the entire breakdown 0-100 but a high / low bracket based on event / age / sex.

so as a 47 yr old male your 2 mile bracket is 14:30 (100) down to 22:55 (60).

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quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:

I don’t know what the scoring or minimums are going to be now.

The latest, greatest ACFT info

quote:

Originally posted by Strambo:
I don’t have a problem with different “scoring,” I was reacting to PA Sigs use of the term “standard.”

The original concept was a minimum standard for passing based on MOS with combat arms being the highest. This wouldn’t have been age or gender based since combat don’t care. A different scale for scoring could have proceeded from there.

I don’t know what the scoring or minimums are going to be now.

I see, yeah I have no problem with the minimum being the same across the board.