Yeah. And to be honest, even at my fittest, I would struggle with the old Army fitness test. I hate doing cardio – my idea of real cardio is smashing my limbs into a heavy bag for 30 minutes, or sparring for an hour. But running is just murder on my body and my joints. And as a result, I’d almost certainly fail the test.

But the new test is even dumber, and it will almost surely fail when implemented. As you and others have pointed out, it is already failing and will probably be walked back – and indeed that appears to be happening already.

Even so, none of this bodes well for the future. A military designed for the clear purpose of killing people and breaking things is a military that puts time and effort into making its men fit, alert, relaxed, and ready for action at any time. The Roman legions had fitness standards in its day that most modern militaries would fail abjectly today – and that was by design. It turned rabble into an unbreakable wall of steel and will – which is why the Romans had probably the best heavy infantry in the world for the better part of a thousand years.

By contrast, the US military appears to be focused on hitting recruitment quotas, and to hell with standards. This isn’t going to end well.

Yeah, that’s somewhat along the lines of my thinking as well. The fact that the Army currently struggles to fill its ranks with recruits fit enough to do the job, is a direct consequence of the culture in which it operates. And that culture is fat, slow, and weak. But the Army’s job is to take that raw material and shape it into warriors. And that part now is no longer happening either, simply because they need to meet quotas. So, instead of focusing on the mission for which we need a military, the Army focuses now on unrealistic and silly fitness tests based on bad programming and bad principles.

Of course, the Army already appears to be walking the test back as fast as it can, which is a sure-fire indication that even the top brass understands that it f-ed up.

Indeed, sir. It would appear that this is already happening.

What I’m curious about is whether the warning signs were there earlier on, during the Obarmy Administration. From what I understand, the Lightworker basically purged the ranks of competent and skilled top brass and high-performing candidates for flag rank. What level of the current kind of nonsense did you see before you left?

I do like that scene, even though I generally hate that movie.

That being said… if they had called that film anything OTHER than STARSHIP TROOPERS, I actually would have liked it. The film is campy, cheesy, stupid… and yet strangely compelling.

For reference, I did the test in May 2020. I knocked out 66 pushups, 76 situps, did the 2-mile run in 17:09 (all timed by my wife, she’s a military brat, no skimping on standards with her). According to my age group (52-56-and no I’m not a stinkin’ boomer, leading edge GenX), my score was 280. My run would’ve been faster on a track, because my neighborhood is full of hills (it’s my excuse…and old age). I would’ve scored 100 in the 42-46 age for pushups (10 years younger than me) and 100 in the 32-36 age group for situps. Yeah, my run sucked, old age and two rebuild jobs on my right knee have slowed me down.

As far as the members of the Doorkickers Union (people in the operations side of the house, for example: Infantry; Special Operations; Special Forces; Aviation, et.al.), most of them already know they need to be better than the numbers of the minimums (whether they work at it is another question only to be answered by the individual…). But, I’ve been lucky to be around some Army and Marine Corps Infantry guys, and they were fit, and could run. I’ve never met any active duty SEALs, Marine Raiders (also Force Recon guys), Green Berets, and Rangers, (haven’t met any Air Force PJs or CCTs-their special ops guys) who were not in great physical shape. Their lives and the lives of guys they stand next to, depend on being in the best physical shape they could be in. All these guys in these careers are lean, muscular (not powerbuilders but strong), and have great endurance. All of these guys have to “ruck” with weight, some have to swim (SEALS and the Marine Recon and Raiders), run, and do O-course in order to get through the assessment phase (SEALs do BUD/S which is it own little version of hell on earth, but it works), to get to the training and the fun stuff…

The army brass (being stupid, which is normal in all militaries), should’ve incorporated some the lessons learned from urban combat in Iraq and mountain combat in Afghanistan (Aren’t the “Afghans” 4-0 against empires,,,? Just asking?), in regards to actual functional combat fitness. Oh like having soldier do a ruck run for a mile with a 40 lb ruck and their battle rattle, for time, as part of the test? How about a 25 yard shuttle run, for 150 yards, with your IBA, war belt, and rifle, for time? Just me spitballin’?

It doesn’t require ten, just one.

Do 1 pull up. Then bring your knees to your elbows.
That’s it.

It compares to a datapoint Angela Hartman has in her book for Child Development, Balanced and Barefoot.
She references a study where a set of children are tested for fitness metrics in 4th grade in 1980 and in 2010. These metrics are simple: How long can you hang from a monkey bar? How quickly can you navigate crossing a balance beam? How fast can you run this sprint?
The data is segmented into 12 portions. (If it were quarter sections they would be quartiles, so whatever the term is for dozen-tiles).
If you took the middle-level students from the 1980 results and transported them into 2010, they would fill up the top 1/12th of the 2010 tier. No study participant in 2010 would fit in the top two segments of 1980.
Naturally, the strength developed in childhood scales effectively to adults. Strong children tend to become strong adults, weak children stay weak. Probably a combination of developed habits and biological responses.

So the army does have a real problem: They get only weak people and have to figure out how to still fill ranks. As with the Dark Lord’s MPAI theory, of course they’re going about it completely wrong.