In Latest Blow to Military Effectiveness, U.S. Navy Will No Longer Require Sailors to Pass Physical Fitness Tests

In Latest Blow to Military Effectiveness, U.S. Navy Will No Longer Require Sailors to Pass Physical Fitness Tests

It has long been the case that U.S. Navy officers and sailors were required to pass twice-yearly physical fitness tests consisting of core (sit-ups, or more recently, forearm plank), upper body (pushups), and cardiovascular endurance (1.5 mile run or other equivalent cardio) testing.

Until recently, sailors had two chances to pass the PT test, but after that, they were forced out—not immediately, but forced out in the sense that they would no longer be allowed to re-enlist or be promoted, so they would eventually be forced to separate from active duty, in most cases short of their 20-year retirement eligibility.

But now that is all changed.

Military.com has the story: Sailors Who Fail 2 Consecutive Fitness Tests Will No Longer Face the End of Their Career, Navy Says:

Sailors who fail two consecutive fitness assessments will no longer automatically have their Navy careers brought to an end, according to a new service policy unveiled this week.

Under the old system, sailors who failed one physical fitness assessment, or PFA, lost their ability to be promoted until they were able to pass another test, but their careers would largely proceed onward. However, failing another consecutive PFA would end a career by taking away the ability to be promoted or to reenlist.

The Navy will now allow those career-ending actions to come at the discretion of a sailor’s commanding officer instead of a fleet-wide mandate, the service said in an administrative message explaining the new policy that was sent out Tuesday.

I can tell you that as a former Commanding Officer of an operational attack submarine, constantly dealing with manning shortages, that it would have been awfully tempting to let a sailor slide on their PT test results, rather than losing that person, especially if we were soon departing on deployment.

And that’s not the only benefit for sailors under the new program.

Military.com continues:

“Commanding officers can now evaluate a sailor’s physical readiness progress or lack of progress in performance evaluations, giving them the ability to manage risk, recognize earnest effort, and best take care of their people,” Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, the chief of naval personnel, said in the administrative message.

The new policy says sailors who fail any PFA no longer have to have it noted on their annual evaluation — though they still lose their advancement eligibility until they are able to pass another test.

Dropping this requirement means that sailors who fail once are not necessarily forced to address it when applying for programs where their evaluations are considered, which in turn keeps them more competitive.

Meanwhile, enlisted sailors who fail their second consecutive PFA are no longer required to receive the lowest possible score in the “Military Bearing/Professionalism” category and to be denied the ability to reenlist.

Retention “eligibility for enlisted members will be at the discretion of the CO,” the memo says. In exercising that discretion, commanders should consider a sailor’s “qualification for continued service,” “their overall ability to contribute to Navy missions,” and “the likelihood of improvement in meeting PFA standards within the next 12 months.”

[emphasis added]

Not having a failed PT test noted on a sailor’s annual evaluation is HUGE: This means promotion boards might now be promoting sailors to leadership ranks and positions who are fat and out-of-shape. Who cares, I guess.

And why the big push now to drop the “get in shape or get out” requirement? Does it have anything to do with the Navy’s abysmal recruiting (“U.S. Navy, Faced with Recruiting Nightmare, Begins Accepting High School Dropouts“) and retention numbers? Of course not!

The change, according to the message, is part of the Navy’s push to revamp its culture of leadership and service and is an effort to modernize “our PFA policy to acknowledge our diverse population, increase sailor trust, and enhance quality of service.”

I’m not sure if this new policy enhances the “quality” of a sailor’s service when they suffer no ill-consequences of being fat and out-of-shape to the point of not being required to pass the PT test (twice).

And what does it mean that the new policy “acknowledges” the Navy’s “diverse population”? Are they saying that minority sailors can’t pass the PT test? Sounds pretty racist to me.

And, while the previous policy might seem a bit onerous, it has already been loosened up over the years in a number of significant ways:

It is the latest in a series of changes to the fitness test that has come in recent years.

In February, the sea service announced that it was resetting the counter on PFA failures fleet-wide, enabling up to 1,500 sailors to keep serving.

In November, the Navy decided to ditch a postpartum PFA that new mothers would typically be expected to take less than a year after giving birth.

Ever since emerging from the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Navy has also kept to the pandemic-era change of conducting only one PFA per year instead of two. Tuesday’s message also continues this trend into 2025.

Think about what that means: if the PT test is only given once a year, even under the old policy sailors had two years to get in shape if they were overweight. All they had to do was avoid failing two tests in a row. How hard can that be? You can’t put the donuts down for two years? WTF?

And of course, the Navy made even more excuses for the new policy:

Critics have argued that many of the changes were the Navy relaxing its standards in the face of a challenging recruiting environment and an increasingly overweight population of Americans.

Officials in Cheeseman’s office, however, provided data to Military.com in November that showed the number of sailors failing PFAs had remained very low.

So what? That doesn’t address the question. Why now?

I’m so disgusted by the current state of the U.S. military, and the Navy in particular, I’m not sure how I’m even continuing to post military updates anymore. Ucch.

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