![]() Research behind the ACFT was developed and promoted by the Center for Initial Military Training (CIMT), which sits under Army Training and Doctrine Command. Army leaders and ACFT defenders have all argued that the basis in research better assesses soldiers' capabilities and will prevent musculoskeletal injury, the most common injury in the military. A Research-Based ApproachĪ popular argument in support of the ACFT cites its basis in research. Because the Army is still organized around valuing and promoting physically fit soldiers, the implementation of the ACFT risks losing diversity of expertise in favor of uniformity of exercise. The best soldier in a situation may not be the most fit soldier cultural bias favoring fitness over other skills is short-sighted. However, it should not be the ultimate mark of a good soldier. Physical fitness is and should remain an important aspect of military culture, bearing, and standards. The director of CIMT has said the ACFT is a change "in the right direction for the betterment of the Army and the soldiers" that "assesses your ability to be a soldier." Attitudes about the importance of the ACFT regardless of budgetary, logistical, or Reserve hurdles indicate the Army is staying focused on physical capability as the premier component of readiness for the warfighting mission. The ACFT comes in the wake of former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis' push for a more "lethal" force and the Army's attempt to take a harder stance on obesity and fitness. While physical training and assessments should be restructured to meet the demands of modern conflict, in this case the Army should be implementing MOS-specific testing rather than a new Army-wide fitness test. Luckily, the ACFT is not MOS-neutral, recognizing differing job-category demands, which fall into three difficulty categories: moderate, significant, and heavy. Testing standards are age- and gender-neutral, which normalizes female physical capabilities and recognizes that combat situations do not discriminate. The product of six years of research by the Army's Center for Initial Military Training (CIMT), the ACFT will replace the existing three-event Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) that has been the standard for decades and aims to improve Army fitness culture and physical readiness. The need to broaden the recruiting pool to meet the increasingly technical realities of war runs counter to the endless pursuit of fitness as a measure of readiness. The Army should be deemphasizing fitness as the cornerstone of every soldier's identity and instead focusing on testing relevant to specific job categories. Physical fitness is an outdated measure of readiness for the majority of Army jobs, yet the Army has doubled down on emphasizing just that.
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