The new body-fat standards are between 18% and 26% for men and between 26% and 36% for women, according to a Dec. 18 memo from undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness Anthony J. Tata that the Pentagon released on Monday.

“The upper limit for allowable [waist-to-height ratio] for military service body-composition policies shall be less than 0.55,” the memo says.

The ratio is determined by dividing waist measurement by height.

Under the policy, service members with a waist-to-height ratio of 0.55 or above will be further tested and, if found to exceed body-fat standards, will be placed in their service’s remedial programs and referred to medical authorities for an evaluation, according to the memo.

  • Bizarre attempts to avoid the fact that it doesn’t really matter lmao. What, are they gonna dump thousands of professional soldiers who are willing to die for the empire because of some weird metric-chasing? Motherfucker, if they can still march 40 miles a day in combat gear they’re probably fit enough to sit around on a colonial base for 6 months waiting to get vaporized by a mortar attack shrug-outta-hecks

    • Blakey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 days ago

      It’s a fair point, actually. Test for performance, if they can do the thing who cares? If being fat really does stop people from doing the thing you’ll get rid of the fats pretty quickly anyway. If not you get to have more people who can do the thing.

      That being said everyone should be kicked out of the US military obviously.