Army Combat Fitness Test debuts with major changes to scoring April 1

The Army is moving forward with its long-awaited Army Combat Fitness Test this year, but the service has officially dropped the test’s attempt to set a gender- and age-neutral physical fitness standard — as well as any pretense that it’s formally tied to combat tasks, beyond having “combat” in its name.

The shifts come following an independent review of the test by RAND that Congress ordered in the fiscal 2021 defense policy bill.

Among the test’s changes are:

The ACFT has adopted age- and gender-normed scoring tables, similar to those on the old Army Physical Fitness Test.
The Army, backtracking, now says the test is a “general physical fitness assessment” not intended to predict success on the service’s Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills. That comes after RAND challenged the validity of data from the Army’s 2019 tests at Fort Riley, Kansas, that the service said proved the link.
The leg tuck is no longer an event — the plank, with a newly lowered standard, is the only core event.
A 2.5-mile walk has been added as an alternate aerobic event for troops whose medical profiles prevent them from running.
The ACFT will not immediately impact personnel actions. It has phased implementation deadlines ranging from Oct. 1 of this year to April 1, 2024.