Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses ordered a review of military standards related to physical fitness and appearance across all services.
Hegseth ordered the Secretary of Defense to collect existing standards set by the military sector related to physical fitness, physical composition and grooming.The memo was released late Wednesday.
The following secretary will consider how and why these standards have changed since January 1, 2015. This is the year that the military announced that it would open all jobs to women, including combat roles, and the impact of those changes, as well as the memo said.
“We must remain vigilant about maintaining the standards that allow us to protect Americans and our homelands as the world's most deadly and effective combat force,” Hegses said in a memo.
The memo does not provide insight into why Hegses oversaw the review, but suggests that his past and present rhetoric requires military standards to be stricter and less kind.
“Our army is not perfect. Not fat. Our army looks sharp – not sloppy. We only look for quality, not quotas. Conclusion: our @deptofdefense makes the standard high and great again – beyond the whole power,” Heggs said.I wrote it on xLate Wednesday.
Hegseth has previously suggested that physical standards for combat work have declined to meet diversity quotas, arguing that past defense officials and Democrats have challenged.
In a podcast on November 7th, Hegseth said the US military should not “play a combat role.” It's not making us even more deadly. It made the battle even more complicated. ”
Later, at a Senate nomination hearing in January, Hegses changed his song, saying, “Given the high standards, we pledged that women have access to combat roles.
“There's a review to make sure that the standards have not been eroded in any of these cases,” he argued at the time that physical fitness standards were rewinded to reach the “quota” of women in infantry positions.
In his social media post, Heggs appears to have loosened the body composition rules for recruits across the military – a bid to get more young people enlisted as America is suffering from obesity.
Each branch of the military has set its own fitness and grooming standards, with new male Air Force recruits allowed to rise from 20% to 26% body fat and 36% women from 28%.
However, recruits must meet the same standards as everyone else in the military sector in order to graduate and serve.
Hegseth could be brought about changes to grooming standards made over the past few years, including the Army regulations of 2021 that allow black women to wear hair in a more braided style and women can wear earrings and a wider range of nail polish and lipstick colors.
Supporters of such changes argue that the loose requirement aims to make the military more comprehensive to increase enlistment numbers.
The memo also picks out whiskers that are not currently permitted by the military, except for some religious or medical exemptions, but some services may loosen the rules.
For example, in 2020, the Air Force granted a five-year medical exemption for whiskers, allowing an increase from the previously granted one-year exemption.
This issue is particularly important for Black service members suffering from medical conditions that lead to unnecessary bumps and painful hair caused by regular shaving. This condition, known as the barba in pseudolytic dermatitis, occurs much more frequently among black men compared to their white counterparts.
