The Army has spent the better part of a decade on an update to the age-old PT test, one that better measures factors like the strength and agility to effective in combat. This month, they got one step closer with a Soldier Readiness Test pilot held around the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soldiers from four brigades are finishing up the first pilot of a six-event test developed by Army Forces Command, their director of leader development told Army Times in a Thursday phone interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt the end of this, what our goal is to do is to transform the Army\u2019s physical training culture to one that\u2019s a more holistic approach to functional fitness, while reducing musculoskeletal injuries,\u201d Col. Mike Kirkpatricksaid. \u201cThat ultimately leads to a more ready force, that\u2019s prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gender-neutral assessment is meant to measure skills that mimic those needed on the battlefield, Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soldiers must complete the test in under 23 minutes while wearing fully body armor. The events include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 220-pound tire flips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 An agility test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 A 240-pound dummy drag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 A sand-bag stack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 A sand-bag toss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 A 1 1\/2-mile run on unimproved terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike the Army Physical Fitness Test, these events measure multiple facets of fitness: Explosive strength, agility, cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance and muscular strength. It\u2019s also pass\/fail and has gender-neutral standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe APFT, as it stands right now, provides a snapshot in time of an individual soldier\u2019s health, and really doesn\u2019t effectively correlate to the unit-specific tasks and battle drills that soldiers are required to execute,\u201d Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FORSCOM picked four brigades from four different corners of the Army to test it out: 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas; 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York; and the 20th Engineer Brigade, which has units at Fort Stewart, Georgia, Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Testing ended Friday, and the project coordinators have until December to analyze the results and brief them to FORSCOM senior leadership, Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to speculate on when it would be implemented,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting it right<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Soldier Readiness Test is a rebirth of the Army\u2019s effort to do a better job measuring functional fitness, and the first idea to see daylight since the service scrapped a 2012 PT test overhaul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Training and Doctrine Command took the lessons learned from that false start, Sergeant Major of the Army Dan Dailey told Army Times on July 7.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI felt, when I took over as the TRADOC sergeant major, that we were rushing into this,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This time around, he said, they\u2019re taking their time. Now, both TRADOC and FORSCOM are coming at a combat fitness test from different angles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLet\u2019s not try to spend a whole lot of money on a product that everybody\u2019s upset with in the first place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FORSCOM took inspiration from a wife range of expertise, Kirkpatrick said, from the Research Institute of Evironmental Medicine to Army Special Operations Command and professional basketball team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officials have not hammered out how the SRT would fit into the regular PT-testing cycle, but Kirkpatrick said it would not function the same way in terms of career effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not designed too be included into promotion boards or taken into consideration for awards and such, like that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s more of an assessment of our physical readiness programs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years the Army has pivoted from a hardcore training regime of repetition and exhaustion toward something more holistic that puts a focus on recovery, to prevent the overuse injuries that plague so many soldiers and bring down unit readiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A test is the natural progression of that idea, to see whether the functional fitness programs that so many units are promoting have any effect on physical readiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhich in turn will decrease nondeployability just due to injury,\u201d Kirkpatrick said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The classic PT test will still have its place, Dailey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe APFT has been around for a long time and it works. Is it the best thing? Absolutely not. We\u2019ve known that for years,\u201d Dailey said. \u201cBut it is the best when you talk about \u2013 you can do it in any environment with no equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ease of administering the test is the reason the Army\u2019s held onto it for so long, but it has limitations. It does not simulate combat-related tasks, for instance, and all three events measure one thing: endurance. It does not measure strength or agility, two necessities for a battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you can pass a PT test at the male or female standard, then you\u2019re generally in good shape,\u201d Dailey said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t prove that you can be an 11B, it doesn\u2019t prove that you can be an artillery soldier, it doesn\u2019t prove that you can be a fuel specialist. It doesn\u2019t prove that you can be an 88M, which is a high physical demand task.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Combat-ready<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SRT is the second new fitness test kicking around the Army this year, after the service made the Occupational Physical Assessment Test part of doctrine at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That test consists of a medicine ball throw and standing long jump to measure explosive strength \u2014 the maximum amount of force someone can exert at one time \u2014 as well as a deadlift to test general muscular strength and an interval run to measure measure speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That test is administered to recruits and to soldiers changing MOSs, with a tiered grading system based on the physical demands of their chosen MOS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That test came out of the Army\u2019s preparations for integration that last combat arms MOSs, which got everyone thinking about the need for gender-neutral MOS physical standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be about gender,\u201d Dailey said. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be about where you\u2019re from, or your religion, or any of that. It shouldn\u2019t be about what your sexual orientation is \u2013 who cares? What it should be about is whether or not you can do the job. When a person, regardless of all those dynamics I just described, can meet the requirement of a physical assessment, then there\u2019s no question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She lifted the artillery round and put it in the gun, and it fired and it killed the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following the roll-out of OPAT, both FORSCOM and TRADOC continued took the next steps to come up with their own functional fitness tests. While FORSCOM\u2019s is designed to be administered at units, the TRADOC test would focus on soldiers initial entry training, according to FORSCOM spokesman Jim Hinnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SRT, Kirkpatrick said, is designed to be administered and managed at the brigade level, as a litmus test of unit readiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to the four brigades in the FORSCOM pilots, other units are able to administer a practice SRT, as the 46th Engineer Battalion at Fort Polk, Louisiana did on Friday, according to a new release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That data won\u2019t be used in the FORSCOM study, however, because the tests won\u2019t be performed under the same controls as the official pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that SRT\u2019s pilot program is wrapping up, TRADOC is up next to roll out a trial of it\u2019s Combat Readiness Test, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Army has spent the better part of a decade on an update to the age-old PT test, one that better measures factors like the strength and agility to effective in combat. This month, they got one step closer with a Soldier Readiness Test pilot held around the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":85671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":70,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["news"],"primary_category":"news"}}},"categories":[12,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3301],"class_list":["post-47283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"WFHEG6U2TVDQJPJ5R2J7VIQCTE","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-army\/2017\/07\/21\/army-tries-out-new-soldier-readiness-test-in-pilot-at-installations\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n