Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed the military services to develop “sex-neutral” physical standards for combat arms jobs, which involve service members directly participating in ground combat.
As part of the review, Hegseth has ordered the military branches to “develop comprehensive plans to distinguish combat arms occupations from non-combat arms occupations,” the March 30 memo says.
Each service may define combat arms differently, a defense official told Task & Purpose on Monday.
Examples of combat arms specialties include infantry, artillery, armor, cavalry, and special operations forces. These jobs are typically physically strenuous. For example, physical tasks that an Army 13B “cannon crewmember” must perform include frequently lowering and lifting 103-pound shells 1.5 meters vertically and carrying them up to 3 meters 15 times within 15 minutes while wearing up to 64 pounds of gear, according to the Army.
“All entry-level and sustained physical fitness requirements within combat arms positions must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation and the readiness needed to confront any adversary,” Hegseth wrote.
In his memo, Hegseth writes that standards for troops in ground combat roles should “emphasize the ability to carry heavy loads, endure prolonged physical exertion;” special operations forces must be judged by how well they swim, climb, and parachute; and service members in specialized jobs such as Explosive Ordnance Disposal must demonstrate their proficiency in their “unique and demanding tasks such as aquatic rescue, repair, and demolition.”
To underscore his point, Hegseth underlined that the military service chiefs “may not establish standards that would result in any existing service member being held to a lower standard,” adding a star at the end of the sentence.
The heads of the military branches have 60 days to submit their proposals and six months to implement their plans.
In a video posted to X on Sunday, Hegseth said that the military had “allowed standards to slip and different standards for men and women in combat arms MOSs [military occupational specialties] and jobs.”
But the military services have already started equalizing physical standards for men and women. Infantry soldiers, for example, already must pass the High Physical Demand Tasks, which is a “gender neutral, standards based test” that demonstrates their ability to perform certain physical activities that the Army would need them to do in battle. Under HPDT, infantry soldiers have to be able to lift a soldier from a burning vehicle, throw a hand grenade into a target, carry a 50-caliber barrel, drag a soldier on a skid, scale a large wall, build a fighting position with sandbags, and do three-to-five second rushes with high and low crawls.
The Marine Corps also rolled out gender-neutral standards for 29 military occupational specialties in 2015.
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