Before his nomination for Defense Secretary, Hegseth said on a podcast interview that women ‘straight up’ do not belong in military combat roles. He reversed his position weeks later.
US Defense Secretary, Japanese Prime Minister visit Iwo Jima memorial
In his first trip to Japan, U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth visited Iwo Jima and attended a memorial with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the military to end separate fitness standards for women in combat roles, a move he said will make the military more lethal, but that women servicemembers and military experts said could hurt recruitment without improving soldiers’ readiness for battle.
In a memo dated Sunday, Hegseth directed the heads of the the military’s departments to submit a plan to make all physical fitness standards for combat positions “sex-neutral” within 60 days, and then to implement those plans within six months.
In mid-March, Hegseth ordered the military to investigate how physical fitness standards have changed since 2015. The first women servicemembers entered military combat roles the next year.
Before his nomination for defense secretary, Hegseth said on a podcast interview that women “straight up” do not belong in military combat roles. He reversed his position weeks later as he faced an uphill path to Senate confirmation.
Women veterans and servicemembers remain wary that a blanket removal of women from combat positions – or even more broadly from the military’s ranks – is Hegseth’s ultimate goal.
“We as a community are very suspicious” that Hegseth’s directive could be aimed at restricting women from serving in parts of the military that “he doesn’t think they should,” said Lorry Fenner, a 26-year Air Force veteran and a former director at the Service Women’s Action Network.
Fenner said overhauling the standards could hurt recruitment and push women out of serving in those roles. “Why would you stay somewhere you’re not wanted?” she said.
In the memo, Hegseth directed the services to “clearly define” which roles are combat arms positions in their submitted plans. For those roles, all physical fitness standards, including “entry-level” requirements, must be gender-neutral, the memo said.
The new standards could impact the thousands of women serving in the Army’s artillery, armor, and infantry branches. The Army has more than 6,700 women enlisted and nearly 3,000 female officers serving in the combat arms branches of air defense and field artillery, armor, aviation, engineers, cyber, infantry, and special Forces, according to Maj. Travis Shaw, an Army spokesperson.
The military’s most selective roles have always maintained gender neutral standards – the first woman joined the Green Berets in 2020, and a woman has yet to become a Navy SEAL.
Many occupational assessments within the military are already sex-neutral. Women in the infantry already must pass the High Physical Demand Tasks, which is gender-neutral.
“Army senior leaders will follow the guidance given by the Secretary of Defense to determine if additional gender-neutral testing is required for all military occupation specialties,” Shaw said.
“Pete Hegseth is lying again. All combat positions already have gender neutral standards,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., who voted against Hegseth’s confirmation and lambasted him at the January hearing.
“Our standards are applied to make sure servicemembers are able to complete the mission—we don’t ask a 50-year-old sergeant to do the same number of push-ups as an 18-year-old cadet, we just ask that they can execute their role and keep our country safe,” said Duckworth, one of the first women to fly Army combat missions during the Iraq War.
“For far too long, we allowed standards to slip,” Hegseth said in a video posted to X. The directive is aimed at creating “the best possible leaders and the highest possible standards that are not based at all on your sex,” he said.
Hegseth has long criticized what he claims are lagging physical fitness requirements throughout the military.
Standards for soldiers in ground combat “should emphasize the ability to carry heavy loads, endure prolonged physical exertion, and perform effectively in austere, hostile environments,” according to the memo.
But some military experts said focusing tests for combat positions on brute force alone doesn’t translate exactly into increased “readiness and lethality,” as Hegseth’s memo said the new standards would enable.
The memo “is a reflection of the mindset that to run fast means you are a better leader,” said Kris Fuhr, a former Army expert in gender integration. “The bottom line is the physical fitness test is but one measure of a soldier’s lethality.”
Michael McGurk, a retired colonel and a former director of research on Army training, said it was “possible” that increasing standards for combat positions could make it harder to find “qualified recruits that meet these higher standards.”
Similar criticisms led the Army to ditch a gender-neutral basic physical fitness test three years ago.
In 2021, the Army test-launched a new version of its Combat Fitness Test, the basic physical fitness test required of all its soldiers, with gender-neutral standards. More than 40% of all women failed the new test.
A RAND study conducted on lawmakers’ orders and released the next year called into question whether the test’s requirements actually translated to soldiers preparedness to enter combat. The high fail rates, especially among women, could also impact recruitment, researchers found.
In response, the Army implemented an age- and gender-normed standard.
McGurk, whose team was responsible for developing the test, said it would be less “disruptive” for the military to adjust its existing standards for combat arms positions, rather than to completely overhaul the system, as Hegseth ordered. Services already have “comprehensive, modern, well-researched” tests, he said.