Space Force is scrapping the annual fitness test in favor of wearable trackers
npr.org
npr.org
If someone is developing eating disorder symptoms they need to be chaptered and removed from military service. I don’t get why we would change the performance standards here. We’ve had fitness requirements in the military since forever. This isn’t a charity or a social club in college.
These things are highly, highly correlated - especially so in the military.
>Given a candidate that's otherwise already disciplined and healthy enough to work at a desk job
Working a desk job negatively impacts ones health and fitness, that is a fact lamented on this very website quite often. Maintaining baseline fitness performance standards is as much about maintaining a fighting force able to actually engage in combat (unless you, for some reason, think that certain roles should just assume they never have to actually fight - Ukrainians might have something to say about that) as it is about ensuring your people are healthy. It's not "for it's own sake". Fitter people have more energy, are able to maintain higher levels of alertness, able to stay up for more hours in high stress jobs. All of which a satellite operator would be required to do.
If someone has the aptitude to be a good satellite technician but can't meet fitness standards due to severe asthma or using a wheelchair or whatever, should they be turned away in the name of maintaining a fighting force? The military already has trouble filling recruiting quotas for some of the more technically demanding jobs, so paradoxically reducing fitness standards for certain non-combat MOS's might actually increase overall combat readiness.
First of all, the enemy gets a say in where you have to fight, and - forgetting that there have been terrorist attacks at major military installations in the recent past[1] - saying "realistically this is unlikely" isn't a meaningful way to prepare for war, in fact it's dangerous. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't "realistic", either, because of the same reason (distances involved, which is what you're implying by mentioning Peterson).
>Many of the Space Force jobs aren't even really "military" in any meaningful sense; they could be done by civilian contractors but are put into a military branch for budgetary and security reasons.
So? Neither are about half of the sustainment jobs in the Army, from mechanics to finance to human resources.
>If someone has the aptitude to be a good satellite technician but can't meet fitness standards due to severe asthma or using a wheelchair or whatever, should they be turned away in the name of maintaining a fighting force?
These folks are already turned away. Again, this is a military branch. It's not like I'm saying everyone in the Space Force has to be able to pass an RPFT, because it wouldn't make any sense to hold these people to the fitness standards of infantrymen.
>The military already has trouble filling recruiting quotas for some of the more technically demanding jobs, so paradoxically reducing fitness standards for certain non-combat MOS's might actually increase overall combat readiness.
This is an excuse, nothing more. Mean American fitness levels have dropped precipitously over the past 2 decades, and instead of addressing that problem, military leaders and policy makers seem to all say "well crap now we can't find anyone who can do 30 pushups, guess we should just lower standards".
The concerns about a sudden enemy or terrorist attack seem a little silly. We're talking about people who spend all day staring at screens, and don't even have weapons issued or close combat training. Base security will still be provided primarily by Air Force Security Forces (or civilian employees), and no one is proposing reducing fitness standards for them.
I haven't seen much propaganda in the curriculum.
Did you attend the public educational system in the US? And if so, you didn't see much propaganda in the curriculum?
I'm literally not asking for that. I'm advocating for baseline levels of fitness. It isn't some herculean effort to do 30 push ups, some ab exercises, and shuffle step for 1.5 or 2 miles (or whatever the AF standard is) without passing out. If you can't do that yet, that's totally fine! That's what basic training is for, and no one should feel ashamed for not being able to do that as a civilian. You don't show up day zero and are expected to max your PT test.
>The concerns about a sudden enemy or terrorist attack seem a little silly. We're talking about people who spend all day staring at screens, and don't even have weapons issued or close combat training. Base security will still be provided primarily by Air Force Security Forces (or civilian employees), and no one is proposing reducing fitness standards for them.
Again, while it's likely that the facilities these people are operating in are far from the battlefield, and will be/are hardened, I don't see how saying "don't worry no war will find you, at least physically" is relevant to the other points I've made. You say that these people are rare, and their technical skills highly important to national security. And I agree with you, which is why the military should make sure they stay in shape, for their health and for them to be able to do their jobs better.
It sounds like we're maybe making different arguments, and what you're really saying is that the Space Force should be mostly civilians, or people who feel like they're civilians but just wear a uniform 9-5, M-F. I disagree with this perspective, and I apologize if you aren't advocating for this.
To address this question:
>So would you prefer that they keep fitness standards high but take recruits with lower ASVAB scores or less education or criminal records? Something has to give.
I prefer a draft.
I thought we decided this path was abusive and counterproductive?
Sit-ups, aka curl-ups! Did the AF brass miss the news?
> In fact, curl-ups have been linked to an increased risk of creating or aggravating lower back injuries.
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/24201...
https://rotcconsulting.com/navy-marine-corps-switch-plank-fi...
Or is some other service's way always wrong, if it's not already the AF way of doing things?
The article NPR links to, making the case that the annual physical assessment tests have spurred eating disorder symptoms, links to another page (a study) which is the apparent underlying evidence of the claim. The study looked at Iraq and Afghanistan war era Veterans and examines the prevalece of what they are calling Atypical Anorexia Nervosa (AAN). Upon review, I see zero evidence in the study connecting the assessment test with the disease. The authors of the study make no such claim.
When I see articles like the one linked by OP I am a bit perplexed. Is the NPR reporter/author intentionally misleading the reader? Are they just too lazy or unintelligent to sufficiently research the topic they are writing about?
It seems like one of the driving reasons for the change is a concern about people gaming the annual test. Couldn't fitness trackers also be gamed? For example, someone could put a pedometer into a motorized cradle to fake walking/running.
It didn't surprise me that my wife's Fitbit could easily overcount 10,000 steps/day but I was really puzzled by heart rates as high as 180 (which is way above acceptable max given her age) until I found out about the problem of reading motion as heartbeat. I at least partially understood the evening my Garmin was showing a heart rate around 80 when 120 would have been more like it--it was cold but I didn't have far to go and I didn't consider stopping to layer up and killing my night vision in the process to be worth it. (I had enough moonlight that my headlamp was still in my pack, but I would have had to use it to ensure I didn't drop anything and that would have meant being annoyed by all the bugs that would keep flitting around.)
Optical heart rate sensors on the latest Garmin watches are usually pretty accurate. But they can give false readings if the band is too lose or the sensor is dirty. For any real workout or fitness test it's best to use a separate wireless heart rate strap paired to the watch.
As for 180 being possible for my wife--nope. We aren't youngsters and she was carrying on a conversation at the time. It was reading her arm movement, not her heart. I got myself a separate heart rate strap but Fitbit doesn't support them and she's just wearing it for the bonus the insurance company gives. (Which is set to such a ridiculously low threshold that you would have to be awfully sedentary to not reach it--in practice it translates to wear a fitness tracker, get $10/month.)
Also, as you note it is people who deal with satellites. Isn't that almost all done at fixed bases in friendly areas? If a satellite operation is being conducted to support something like a covert mission in hostile territory for example, the people running the satellites are back in some control center quite possibly back in the USA.
It's not like if special forces had trackers that an enemy could use to see where they are heading for a mission. For the satellite guys all missions are the same from a tracker's view: drive to the office and work your normal shift then go home.
>drive to the office and work your normal shift then go home
or to your lover, furry convention, abortion clinic. Grindr was Chinese owned for a reason. All accessible from single database without the need to dispatch agents on foreign soil.
Now, you may have a point re: the furry convention...
Kidding aside, the article says the data portal will be Space Force only, and while it's not beyond the realm of possibility a Chinese asset might get a CAC card and reveal where Sgt. Spacemarine secretly plays Magic: The Gathering, we're talking about people who work shifts at big giant bases everyone knows about (Schriever, Buckley, Vandenberg, etc.), not SOF forces.
Fitness trackers don't record location indoors because GNSS signals are blocked. That feature only works when you're outside.
Locations you visit off work are just as important. So I wont be able to determine which surgery room at the abortion clinic you went to, or which slot machine is your favorite, is that a big issue for an adversary?
Fitness trackers only record location when the GNSS receiver is specifically, intentionally activated. On a Garmin watch that takes a minimum of 3 button presses. Cell phones are always tracking you (at least approximate location based on towers).