Army Directive 2026-07 has officially introduced the Combat Field Test (CFT), a physical battery designed to better assess the capabilities for soldiers in combat arms specialties. Paired with the Army Fitness Test (AFT), these assessment mechanisms and scoring standards now reflect a balance between relative (AFT) and absolute (CFT) measures of fitness and physical capability. While this new test has increased the fitness ceiling for soldiers in combat branches, the Army should next address the floor.
Under this new policy, soldiers in combat specialties with permanent profiles preventing them from performing any primary event on the AFT are ineligible to complete the CFT and will be evaluated for reclassification to a different military occupational specialty unless granted a waiver. Soldiers in combat specialties with waivers remain subject to the twice annual AFT requirement. However, Soldiers not in combat specialties with a permanent profile are able to pass the AFT and remain in the Army by completing a minimum of a 2.5-mile walk. That standard gives commanders absurdly limited information about a soldier’s ability to meet the physical demands of the modern battlefield, combat role or otherwise.
The Army needs a solution, and fortunately, it need only look to its recent past to find one. In 2020, when the Army announced its new fitness test, the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT), it also introduced the modified ACFT (ACFT MOD) for soldiers with permanent medical profiles that prevented them from completing any testing events. The ACFT MOD required that all soldiers had to complete and pass, at a minimum, the maximum deadlift, sprint-drag-carry, and two-mile run or alternate aerobic event. Lifting, moving under load, and sustaining aerobic effort are not arbitrary fitness tasks, but key performance indicators that contribute to individual and unit survivability and lethality. In light of that, the ACFT MOD was implemented to give commanders useful information to make informed decisions about their soldiers’ deployability.
With new tests in place, the Army can and should provide commanders with similarly actionable readiness data. The service can do this by simply reinstating the ACFT MOD’s original minimum requirements (maximum deadlift, sprint-drag-carry, and aerobic event). No change to the current AFT events. No change to current age- and gender-normed scoring standards. Just a reinstatement of the ACFT MOD as the AFT MOD. When it comes to Army fitness culture, there should be further debate about individual event scoring standards, elevated expectations for officers regardless of branch, and other subjects. But none of that matters if the minimum modified standard fails at its most basic purpose: giving commanders a credible baseline indicator of readiness.
From APFT to ACFT to AFT and CFT
Under the legacy Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) that preceded the ACFT, the minimum requirement for soldiers with a permanent profile was a 2.5-mile walk. Not only did a 2.5-mile walk lack the construct validity to determine if a soldier had the baseline aerobic capacity for combat operations, but it also created unintended incentives to remain in an injured status rather than rehabilitate.
The 2020 introduction of the ACFT addressed this gap. In addition to shifting the Army toward a more comprehensive assessment of physical readiness, Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 7-22.01, Holistic Health and Fitness Testing, published in October 2020, introduced the ACFT MOD.
The purpose was clear. ATP 7-22.01 stated that when permanently profiled soldiers achieved minimum ACFT MOD scores, commanders could be confident that the soldiers were able to perform critical physical tasks required to protect themselves and others in combat. These included moving under direct fire, reacting to indirect fire while dismounted, constructing a fighting position, transporting a casualty, and infiltrating or exfiltrating from a combat environment.
That was the right standard because it connected fitness testing to readiness. It did not require every soldier to complete the full six-event ACFT. It did, however, establish a meaningful minimum threshold for physical capability. This was a much-needed, tangible readiness indicator that 2.5-mile walk data simply failed to provide to commanders.
In 2022, following a RAND Corporation external review of the ACFT, the Army released a new edition of ATP 7-22.01 that made several changes to the test. The leg tuck was replaced with the plank, and the 2.5-mile walk returned as an alternate aerobic event. In this revision the ACFT MOD was also removed, even though the RAND study did not specifically recommend its removal. The change was not explained or mentioned in the ATP’s change summary. The current ATP 7-22.01, published in March, now states only that, “At a minimum, permanently profiled Soldiers must pass an aerobic endurance event.”
This returned the Army to a familiar problem it had with the APFT: a minimum standard that does not provide commanders with enough information to assess physical readiness.
Why the MOD Matters
The unwritten implication of the 2020 ACFT MOD was that if your physical limitations restricted you from participating in the maximum deadlift, sprint-drag-carry, and aerobic events, then you could not test until you had rehabilitated. Consequently, prolonged inability to complete the modified minimum standard would trigger a review of deployability, rehabilitation potential, suitability for remaining in a military occupational specialty, or continued service. At face value, this sounds like a terrible disservice to soldiers with permanent profiles, many of whom sustained their injuries during combat operations. I argue that the greater disservice is to maintain them in an organization where they cannot deploy with their brothers and sisters, let alone flourish professionally.
The purpose of a modified fitness test is not to punish injured soldiers. It is to give commanders useful readiness data and to give soldiers clear expectations for continued service. A soldier who cannot complete the full AFT may still be physically capable of contributing meaningfully to the mission. That is exactly why a modified test is necessary. But the minimum standard must measure more than aerobic endurance.
The 2020 ACFT MOD addressed this reality. It established a practical floor without requiring every permanently profiled soldier to meet the same standard as a fully unrestricted soldier. It gave the Army a middle ground between the full test and a walk-only minimum.
The goal should not be to keep soldiers in administrative limbo. The goal should be to help them return to meaningful participation when possible and make honest, informed decisions when they cannot. A modified test built around the maximum deadlift, sprint-drag-carry, and aerobic endurance event would help commanders better understand risk. It would also help medical providers, physical therapists, and athletic trainers guide rehabilitation toward functional outcomes.
When the ACFT MOD was first introduced, soldiers began treating rehabilitation as the path back to full participation, not merely as an administrative requirement. The elevated standard gave them a tangible goal. It also gave leaders a clearer way to distinguish between temporary limitation, long-term restriction, and true inability to meet the physical demands of continued service.
That is good for units, and it is good for soldiers.
Countering the Counterarguments
Of course, as with any change in a large organization, pushback is inevitable. But do likely criticisms of reintroducing a modified test hold up under scrutiny?
Soldiers in noncombat specialties should not be held to a combat-oriented standard.
They are not. The CFT is the current combat-oriented standard, while the AFT is a general fitness assessment used to provide commanders with valuable information regarding the deployability of their soldiers. That said, the current and future battlefields are extremely likely to require all soldiers to lift, carry, and move under load. Long gone are the days of noncombat deployments to forward operating bases with concrete barracks and in-room Wi-Fi.
This will hurt retention and readiness.
Anything that could potentially impact retention is a valid concern. Maintaining nondeployable soldiers indefinitely certainly maintains higher manpower numbers. The real concern, however, is readiness; and manpower numbers are a poor indicator of readiness if a portion of those soldiers are occupying deployable positions but are not physically deployable. It is worth assuming risk by reinstating the ACFT MOD as an AFT MOD because readiness standards shape behavior well before they remove people.
Can’t soldiers with permanent profiles fill administrative or other roles that are not physically demanding instead?
This is already common practice. These positions provide opportunities for broadening and professional development for soldiers and noncommissioned officers, as well as a chance to use their experience from the line for the betterment of the force. If these positions become de facto holding areas for nondeployable soldiers, they stop functioning as broadening opportunities and become informal accommodation billets.
Not all profiles preclude participation in all five events.
Correct, ATP 7-22.01 requires that soldiers still complete all events that their profiles do not prohibit. The AFT MOD’s three-event minimum simply ensures that all soldiers are able to maintain a functional military baseline.
Are you saying the hand-release pushup and the plank (the two events excluded from the proposed AFT MOD) aren’t functional?
There is certainly value in upper body push and pull muscular endurance and strength, as well as core stability. These traits are just not the key performance indicators for the successful performance of most basic combat tasks (evacuate a casualty, establish a hasty fighting position, movement under fire, etc.).
The Army has already raised its expectations of soldiers in combat specialties with the CFT. Now we should take the next step by restoring a meaningful minimum readiness floor for soldiers of all specialties who cannot complete the full AFT. ATP 7-22.01 defines physical readiness as “the ability to meet the physical demands of any duty or combat position, move lethally on the battlefield, accomplish the mission and continue to fight, win, and come home healthy.” A fitness standard built on the foundation of a 2.5-mile walk simply contradicts this definition.
Captain Johnny Bates is a US Army EOD officer serving as an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Education at the United States Military Academy. He holds an EdD in curriculum and instruction from Liberty University and an MS in exercise science from SUNY Cortland.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Staff Sgt. Michael Schwenk, US Army
