Posted on 02/06/2019 6:36:57 PM PST by jazusamo
The U.S. Army is developing a more intensive fitness test tailored to combat situations following complaints from commanders of insufficient troop readiness.
Top members of Army brass told The Associated Press that the existing physical fitness tests employed by the Army during basic training do not adequately prepare soldiers for the physical challenges of the battlefield.
A new test that is described by the military as far more physically intensive “may be harder, but it is necessary,” Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, told the AP.
“We needed to change the culture of fitness in the United States Army," added Army Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, commander of the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training. "We had a high number of nondeployable soldiers that had a lot of muscular/skeletal injuries and medical challenges because we hadn’t trained them from a fitness perspective in the right way."
The new test, developed by Maj. Gen. Frost, does not adjust scores for age or gender, unlike the current test. It also adds exercises including dead lifts, sprints with 40-pound weights, power throws, and a 2-mile run among other new tasks.
“Many folks find it easy to do the maximum standard for the current test,” Frost told the AP. “This new test is gender and age neutral. I cannot max this test.”
The AP reports that the new test will affect every soldier who attends basic training, including those not traditionally in combat roles.
“It breaks the mindset of ‘I am an intel soldier,‘” one military intelligence specialist told the news service. “It changes it to ‘I am a soldier,’ because bullets on the battlefield don’t discriminate.”
The test comes in response to concerns about readiness from top Army officials, who told the AP that as many as 12 percent of soldiers are undeployable due to injuries at any given time.
About one-third of soldiers who enter the service leave before their third year due to injuries, according to Frost, which the Army attributes to insufficient fitness training during boot camp.
“The goal is about a having a more combat-ready army," Frost told the AP.
I couldn’t say, enlisted in 60. I’m old. LOL!
Who proposed discharging people?
Go to YouTube and search TED-X, LT General Mark Hertling and you can watch a short video of what our military is up against and why Americans in general are not fit enough for military service.
No more hikes in heels and skirts for the men?
I made two trips carrying a railroad tie 150’ in my yard last year. My back and legs were sore. I’m 72. I don’t think I want to do that anymore.
When was this?
In the mid-60's, the most the more fit guys could do was maybe 5-6. not being a jock in High School, I struggled with one at first.
Some things never change...
"Against the VC, we're not doin' too well, but
If paper were cordite, we'd be blown to hell."
--Saigon Warrior, "In Country" CD
Today, he has a degree in Business Administration and another in Physics. He makes a living as a real estate broker in southeast Idaho. He also has a Class A CDL and has driven flatbeds for TMC out of Des Moines, IA. Real estate is going soft again, so he's going back to driving the flatbeds.
“wo-mile run on a track or a paved, level road, with a 20-minute maximum.”
That’s a jog. My Two mile cross country times in high school were around 12 minutes in Colorado at a mile high, which were mediocre.
In 16 weeks, I lost 20 pounds at Fort Knox, summer of 1990.
Skinniest I’d ever been.
When did you get out of prison? :) j/k
” I’m so old that I was an ammo bearer for David.”
Your MOS was 5Sb.
5SB= 5 stones bearer.
I was the papyrus personnel clerk. Hey someone had to make up the Jargon.
Back in the early 1990s while in the Air Force, I got hyped up and went to maximum fitness routines (running a hundred miles a month was the norm for me). As the months rolled by...I started to have joint and feet problems. The Air Force brought in a sports doctor to the base (they were starting to notice a wide variety of sport injuries). So she examined my running shoes and said in a blunt way...I’d have to upgrade and spend more money on the shoes, and retire them about every three to four months. This meant going from $60 jogging shoes once a year.....to $100 shoes every quarter. She was correct, and my issues decreased, but it was a thorn in my budget.
I suspect when you sit down and analyze the injuries that the Army talks about....these are all things that you could resolve and correct early on, if you had trainers in the gym and going over people’s routines.
My suspicion is that once you throw out the age standings, and have just one goal for folks...you will have more folks in their mid-30s who are going to be given a medical discharge and get a pension deal because of injuries. Maybe that wasn’t the intent, but it’ll be the result.
Yup. Way I heard it that during the Benghazi fiasco the Bammer was holed up with his boyfriend on a drug binge leaving it all to our supposed future president Hillary. And what a wonderful job she did throwing those people under the bus.
But if I see one more photo of an able-bodied soldier or marine carrying a female’s backpack I am going to hurl. If they can’t cut it they are a dangerous deficit. Job One is being trained enough to overcome our enemies. MOS is job Two.
When women come in, physical standards drop.
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