Should the Army Height and Weight Standards be revised?

Great question SGT (Join to see) I have waited for 23 years for the Army to update and or change the standard. That being said yes, the standard needs to be addressed and updated to a more effective practice in measuring body fat also the different types of body types needs to be incorporated into the standard.

I ask this question because I am a black female who ALWAYS has to get taped. I am 70" tall and I weigh in (it fluctuates) anywhere from 179-184. I've never had an issue with being taped until you run across those who don't tape correctly. Therefore putting Soldiers at 1-2% over, but yet scoring 270+ on PT test. No matter how hard I train my genetics will NOT CHANGE.

This needs to be seriously looked at, but right now it won't no matter how much we bitch, whine, or moan. There is a strong desire to get troops out. By hook or crook it's going to be done. This is another tool that will be used in some commanders box to weed out those who aren't "bad" troops, but aren't as "good" as others. How many times have you seen TOG Soldiers and hear "they are models of professionalism and how we should look"? Not to take away from ANY of them, but with some of them getting there fresh out of BCT, are they really? I use them as my example being I used to be judged against them when I had to stuff my tail in Dress Blues on a regular basis at Myer. We preach "total Soldier" and the H/W and APFT come in to trip some very, VERY good Soldiers up. I've had to assist in chaptering out a NCO who was SH*T hot in her MOS, awesome in regards to teaching her job to new troops who weren't even in the Army, but due to APFT/H/W she was seen as a sh*tbag, and even though 1SG hated to do it (He was HELLBENT on saving this NCO), he had to get her counseling done and the recommendation to the commander to chapter her out on weight control. She was sent packing. Is this what we've come down to? A good leader, great NCO, and could TEACH? I know many "stellar" NCO's who couldn't teach themselves how to rip up an already torn paper bag. But they're studs, never have to be taped, and know how to play the game with those above them. I foresee soon that the Army is going to realize that they cut too far too soon. You're going to see massive changes to get back a lot of the talent that it sent packing to include debt forgiveness, bonuses, and stop losses. At that point, MAYBE the Army will take a longer look until it feels the service is too "fat" again. I remember the talk about changing the APFT to make it more inline with what troops are doing in battle.....how'd that work out? Been at war for 14 years and still do the same three event APFT, even though it's been shown it has no relevance to what the force actually does. If anyone on RP has ran two miles in 12 minutes, done 80 push ups, and did 90 sit ups in two minutes in full battle rattle, while conducting your PCC's and PCI's, please let me know. I know dragging a Soldier, carrying a Soldier, road marching over ROUGH terrain with body armor and ruck, working your neck to death looking everywhere and nowhere at the same time, all play into the APFT we need to focus on for the battles coming up. The one upside to the three event test is there's no money and very little time involved to conduct it. Do the six event test on a company, and get ready to be there all day long. S3 can schedule in advance for the next six years for the six event test, and something will go wrong they cannot control. I hope the Army and the sister services get past the "looks" part of being a troop, and realize there is more to this, and actually practice the Total Soldier Concept.
I think after reading this, I'm dead wrong. If the Army really listened to those at the ground levels, we would still be wearing BDU's or a very close variant of it with green jungle boots (tan isn't bad), and they would've realized what the rest of the Army already knew; we had the best uniform ever at the time, there was no need to change it, but we did to a uniform that works great on a couch or in the sky, but not in terrain where you're "grey" and the surrounding ground is tan or green.