Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has thrown down a gauntlet that hasn’t been touched in over a decade: real, uncompromising standards for America’s combat troops—without exception, without gender norms, and without political theater. On his way back from meetings in Japan, Hegseth filmed a brief but forceful message on X, unveiling a policy memo that could mark the end of a long, controversial era in military readiness.
“For far too long,” Hegseth said, “we have allowed standards to slip.” The solution? One physical standard for all—male or female—in combat arms positions. Not “equivalent.” Not “adjusted.” The same.
The announcement is a direct challenge to the social engineering legacy of the Obama-era Pentagon, which opened the door to women in direct combat roles in 2013, then watched as political pressure took the wheel. By 2015, female graduates were being pushed through Ranger School under conditions that sparked internal dissent and public skepticism. And when the Marine Corps delivered a data-driven report revealing that co-ed combat units underperformed compared to all-male ones—Congress and senior brass ignored the findings entirely.
That was the era of performance by press release, and it left the U.S. military riddled with contradictions. On paper, the military wanted equality. In practice, it created dual-track standards, where male and female soldiers were measured differently even within the same job. A man failing a physical fitness test was weeded out. A woman failing the same task? The standard was modified.
For far too long, we have allowed standards to slip. We’ve had different standards for men/women serving in combat arms MOS’s and jobs….
That’s not acceptable, and it changes right now! pic.twitter.com/Zn9OyBew6G
— Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (@SecDef) March 31, 2025
The most glaring example was the rollout of the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT). Initially gender-neutral and role-specific, the ACFT was torpedoed by political backlash when data revealed that 72% of female soldiers failed a core component. Congress intervened, and suddenly, what was once a universal test became a split-deck of soft expectations dressed up as equity. A 13:22 two-mile run earned men a perfect score. Women had a minute and seven seconds of extra runway—15:29—for the same result.
Under Hegseth’s new policy, this kind of goalpost-moving is over. His memo is blunt: “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.” It even closes the usual backdoor: no grandfathering—everyone in combat arms must meet the new standard, regardless of when or how they entered.
This is, without exaggeration, the most significant military readiness directive in years. And yet, it’s also the beginning of a grueling political and institutional fight. Because here’s the truth no one in Washington wants to admit: if the standard holds, the roles won’t.
The military cannot maintain both combat effectiveness and political quotas. When forced to choose between what wins wars and what wins headlines, the Pentagon of the past decade has consistently chosen the latter. If Hegseth holds the line, the consequences are clear: fewer women in combat arms, because biology doesn’t care about ideology.
This isn’t about exclusion. It’s about clarity. In war, the standard must be what the job demands—not what a bureaucrat deems fair. And if that means undoing the false equality created by decades of gender-normed testing, so be it.
Hegseth’s move is bold, overdue, and absolutely necessary. But it is also precarious. The services, pressured by internal inertia and external politics, will look for every loophole and carve-out they can find. Congress, already trained to see every statistical disparity as evidence of discrimination, will push back hard.
The smart play—the honest one—would be to rescind the 2013 directive entirely and declare that close-quarters ground combat is not an appropriate arena for gender integration. That would solve the problem cleanly, logically, and in accordance with the realities of warfare.
