The Air Force has loosened its restrictions on body fat for new recruits | Hacker News Reader

The Air Force has loosened its restrictions on body fat for new recruits

airforcetimes.com

57 pointsfortran77125 comments

I recall reading that other branches of the military would take recruits and in boot camp when they weren't meeting the fitness standards they would get assigned to a group of other similar folks and they'd work on that ... and then later rejoin a group in boot camp after they slimmed down / were more fit.

Seemed like a good / practical idea.

By far the funniest version of this is people who enlist in the US Navy and can't swim. They spend effectively all of boot camp going to the pool while instructors shout at them to float, as if that is somehow going to teach them to tread water.

Maybe somewhat counter-intuitively, swimming is a more relevant skill for the Army than for the Navy. Offshore, being able to swim doesn't help much: you're not going to end up in the water unless you're in some sort of accident, which means that either you're wearing a lifevest, or you're almost certainly going to drown (because you're unconscious or are not found in time). Whereas in the Army you might need to actively cross bodies of water, and therefore you need to be able to actually swim.

No one is swimming with a combat load without special equipment so even the army has limited use for swimming. Navy mostly needs you to not drown while they rescue you if you're just a general seaman too.

If the Marines actually lived up to their name (naval infantry), they'd be the ones who need to swim the most.

Even when they are doing their core differentiation of amphibious assaults they're not really swimming to shore. It's usually more of a survival need rather than being a military need.

I think a pretty large % of people can't swim.

Traditionally many sailors couldn't swim, so it almost fits!

In the UK most children are taught to swim, and in many European countries the same. I'm often surprised to learn that Americans swim less frequently, but I guess it's just another one of those culture and facilities differences.

According to these results [1] North America and West/North Europe is the exact same for Men at 89%, I didn’t realize there was a gap between men and women. At 78% for US and 85% for West/North Europe.

Living near water has nothing to do with it as most places have pools, rivers, lakes, or springs in close proximity.

[1]https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/352679/majority-world...

America has a lot of land with no ocean or nearby significant body of water. Meanwhile, the UK is an island and the British Empire was built on naval power. Swimming is a cultural imperative.

Presumably you have pools, lakes, and rivers though.

Pools exist. Feel like it’s more common for Europeans to go to a local pool to swim than it is for Americans

I think it is very different. In Canada it is very common to go camping or be invited to someone's cottage and you may end up in a dock or boat. Places where you may not be planning on swimming but fall it by accident (or in the case of a boat due to an accident).

For this reason children are generally taught to swim as a safety measure. Drowning incidents are fairly common in Canada so it is good to help reduce them.

If most of your swimming is in pools (especially public pools) it is far safer (shallow end, more people around, limited depth, no trauma from a boating accident) so it is less necessary to learn from a safety point of view. Obviously many people will still learn for fun but it generally isn't pushed as much in school or other community services.

I never learned to swim as a child because I almost drowned during a lesson. Most of the people in the swim class I took as an adult had similar experiences. I think that’s it’s less about access and more about fear of the water.

That seems like... a very good reason to learn how to swim, not a reason to quit. I'm making light of what sounds like a pretty serious situation, I guess, but that is my genuine reaction to your comment.

>British Empire was built on naval power. Swimming is a cultural imperative.

You are answering this to a post that state that not being able to swim was a part of naval culture.

Where I went undergrad they required either passing a swim test or taking a phys ed swim class to graduate. Presumably there were medical exemptions. (And I actually was exempted because I had a Scuba cert which itself required a swim test.) I don’t know how inflexible they were come graduation if push came to shove.

Harvey Mudd?

A "pretty large" number of people does not work in the navy.

Technically true. The Oromo are a large people, making up 35% of Ethiopia's 115 million citizens; Ethiopia does not have a navy.

sorry this was funnier before your edit

Yes, there are both fitness and fatness hurdles, or at least there were a few decades ago. If you were reasonably fit but quite fat, you would go through Army Basic Training but be on a restricted diet. People would lose 30-40 pounds in six weeks, so it was effective. If you were sufficiently unfit that you could not exercise, that was when they sent you to remedial training before you could join Basic Training.

It's a necessary idea. The pool of people willing to join and fit enough to get through boot camp has shrunk enough that the military has been missing their recruiting goals.

The recruiting goals are inflated due to low retention, retention is low due to low morale but also because of high employment rates. When it's easy to get a civilian gig less people stay in, especially among technical rates/MOS's.

The problem isn't as simple as "America too fat".

> high employment rates

For what little it's worth, I never trust this statistic because the unemployment rate calculation doesn't count certain types of people: such as those who've given up looking for work. Given the weird times and general malaise of society, this might be a non-trivial variable right now. I could be wrong about this, but it remains a possibility that we're not getting the right picture of what's happening.

People always bring this up, but there are a myriad of different metrics that include all kinds of different groups, like people who want work but have given up on finding work or people who are working less but than they want to.

All of those measures are highly correlated with each other and move nearly in lockstep with each other.

There are other unemployment measures you can go by if you don't like the one that "everyone" quotes.

Any insight into why morale is low? I have a lot of immediate family in the military with current and past experiences across all the main branches except the Navy and the “Space Force”. I talk to some of them pretty often and so I’ve developed my own theories, but I’d be curious to hear others.

There could be a number of reasons contributing to it. The veil of "America fighting for its freedoms" has fallen a long time ago. Veterans are tragically neglected in the USA, with huge homeless veteran populations, huge suicide rates, and a notoriously terrible medical system for them in the VA. Maybe more opportunities are becoming available for historically neglected populations so they don't need to turn to the military as the only way out of a situation or place.

From talking to veterans directly, some I've talked to are adamant that none of their kids should join the military as they don't see it as worth it. I know families with histories of military service where that has ended with the newer generations so maybe that's also a factor.

Literally every veteran I've talked to with VA medical says its really good.

Most of the people with VA problems were like Vietnam veterans who have zero documentation of their claims that they got hit with agent orange. Most complaints I see about the VA are about refusals to render service, rather than bad service given.

VA quality is very much a regional thing.

A friend of mine (Iraq vet) has the worst experience with the VA offices in Southern California VA offices, they regularly fuck up his prescription refills and refuse to issue him extra/backup scrips so he often has gaps in his medication regimen that debilitate him until the refill comes in.

He moved back up to Oregon last year, solely for access to more functional VA offices. Another friend keeps his residence in Arizona and regularly travels back for appointments, again to avoid dealing with CA VA.

Anecdotally, I know and speak to dozens of Veterans a week and multiples more of young people in the target range, and the general consensus is "what are we fighting/training for, and why would I want to risk anything for an evil/corrupt/racist country". The idea that "America Bad" (however true or not) has permeated nearly everywhere in some form or another.

In fairness, America has earned a lot of it's "America Bad" reputation by acting in deplorable ways and failing to protect and care for its people.

When I was young I was fed a lot of stories about what America was, mostly in contrast to the USSR and other communist countries. I was told about horrible things those evil other nations did to their people or failed to do for them which would never happen in the USA and how proud I should be that we were better than that, but over the course of my life I've seen more and more of those very same things happening right here.

It's even worse for the folks looking at how our military has been used. I've met people who told me they were more than willing to defend their country, but were not at all willing to go to the other side of the planet and defend an oil field, or topple a democratically elected leader so that we could install someone more favorable to being exploited. I don't think there's been a single year of my life where we haven't had US servicemen overseas killing people for one reason or another, but damned if I could even tell you what it was for or where it took place for all but the ones most widely reported/televised.

The US absolutely could do with better PR, and sometimes people are unfairly critical, but it's hard to blame folks feeling disillusioned given our record and even our current/recent behavior leaves a lot of room for improvement.

One has to imagine the poor perception of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have also harmed recruitment. Few people want to sign up when they think they'll just be shipped halfway across the world to die for the interests of an oil company.

Yeah, considering how poorly the US treats their service members and veterans, even if I were eligible for service and thought I'd do well in that kind of environment it'd be very hard not to feel like a sucker. When we demonstrate over and over again that we can't be bothered to take care of the people who are willing to put their lives on the line for our country's interests how can we expect anyone to sign up?

Lack of fitness is the big national health problem, but the first part of the equation is the real stickler. A fat person who is forced to run and do pushups with a controlled diet can always lose weight: but an unwilling person will never join the military voluntarily. Why are so many people unwilling to join?

It's sort of crazy that the military is having trouble recruiting in down economic times: they're the one entity that is always able to hire lots of people regardless of how the economic climate is doing. IMO, the pool of people who would want to join the military would greatly expand if other things were done:

> The brass is doubling down on "woke messaging" for recruitment. You may or may not agree with this personally, but there's zero doubt that this is in conflict with the ideals of the kinds of people who traditionally want to join the military.

> The country's leadership seems to be dead set on, at the very least, a proxy war with Russia. Potentially risking your life to protect your family from real danger is one thing, but few sane people want to seek out unnecessary war for the benefit of the military industrial complex.

> Whether you think the Covid vaccines are good or bad risk-management assessments, there's no doubt that a significant fraction of the country do not see it that way and will not put themselves in a position to potentially take it. Many people don't think it's necessary and don't trust it, but the administration can't seem to let go of the other group of people they're simping for: Big Pharma.

PS: I welcome downvotes if you tell me why my analysis is incorrect, not simply because you disagree with it.

I didn't downvote you but it seems as if there are more obvious explanations such as low unemployment and higher salaries for low-skill jobs--making signing up for the military with all that implies a less desirable option for a lot of people who now have better alternatives.

And "woke messaging"? A proxy war with Russia that US troops are not involved in--certainly relative to the US military situation overseas in the past couple of decades? And lots of private companies required COVID shots to remain employed.

So, yes, those seem like largely irrelevant reasons.

> And "woke messaging"?

To fully explore this idea, I'd have to say some things that are verbotten on HN, but suffice it to say that there's a big difference between the policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and going full on into LGBTQPIA+ that the current military appears to be going on. This kind of thing may have an impression on the kinds of young men that might want to join the military. (as a very small supporting data point on this, look at men's declining entry to colleges). Again, you don't have to agree or disagree with it, I'm only pointing out factors in the conversation that might not get brought up otherwise. These are factors to a non-trivial part of the population.

> A proxy war with Russia that US troops are not involved in--certainly relative to the US military situation overseas in the past couple of decades?

The wars of recent decades are a big factor, but I can say that this push against Russia also isn't helping. My opinion is that people want to defend their homes, but don't want to risk getting exploded in some unnecessary conflict.

> And lots of private companies required COVID shots to remain employed.

And many people hated this and sought out companies that didn't require them. You don't have to agree with refusing the vaccine, but I hope you understand that many people absolutely didn't want it and the military's insistence on injecting people with this doesn't help among some people.

> So, yes, those seem like largely irrelevant reasons.

I strongly disagree with your analysis, but thank you for your polite and honest thoughts at least.

> there's a big difference between the policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and going full on into LGBTQPIA+ that the current military appears to be going on. This kind of thing may have an impression on the kinds of young men that might want to join the military.

I think historically there's probably been a lot of bigoted people in the service, but I'm not sure we should set policy to specifically cater to them just to bump recruitment numbers.

> The wars of recent decades are a big factor, but I can say that this push against Russia also isn't helping. My opinion is that people want to defend their homes, but don't want to risk getting exploded in some unnecessary conflict.

I agree 100% that this is a major factor. I've spoken with many people who are willing to fight to defend their country, but aren't interested in ending up overseas defending oil fields. I don't think it's fair to say that the US is dead set on a war with Russia. Russia is the one invading our allies unprovoked, flooding the internet with disinformation and interfering in our elections. The US might not always respond well to Russia's antics, but I don't think the US is trying to start trouble.

> You don't have to agree with refusing the vaccine, but I hope you understand that many people absolutely didn't want it and the military's insistence on injecting people with this doesn't help among some people.

Military service requires a ton of vaccinations and so antivaxxers were never jumping at the chance to sign on. I'd even suggest that we're probably better off without them anyway. Anyone unwilling to take such a simple step to help protect themselves and their fellow Americans probably won't be the right person for the job, and certainly anyone who is still worried that it's going to turn them magnetic, or give them 5G powers, or worried that it's somehow horrifically dangerous even after 13 billion+ shots have been administered globally without much issue might not be someone whose judgement you want to depend on being able to make quick decisions in a critical situation.

> I think historically there's probably been a lot of bigoted people in the service, but I'm not sure we should set policy to specifically cater to them just to bump recruitment numbers.

This is a straw man point. Not wanting to be in a "woke" organization and having to constantly have stuff like sexuality bashed over your head that doesn't belong in a professional workplace doesn't necessarily mean that you're a bigot.

> I don't think the US is trying to start trouble.

I have friends from countries like Ukraine and Georgia that face big problems with Russia. Even though they don't necessarily always like Russia's government, they refer to the US as a literal spider, always sneaking around and trying to achieve power and play games everywhere. They tell me how the US meddles in their own politics and elections all of the time. Feel free to have your own belief, but your opinion is contrary to a lot of my own experience from people in the region.

> Military service requires a ton of vaccinations and so antivaxxers were never jumping at the chance to sign on.

Being against the Covid vaccine specifically doesn't necessarily imply that you are against all vaccines. I'm not trying to be insulting, but I'd like to express in the kindest way possible that the people that are very afraid of Covid do not seem to be informed about the other perspective very well at all.

> I'd even suggest that we're probably better off without them anyway.

If the concern is dwindling recruitment numbers, you do realize that a non-trivial percentage of the public is against the Covid vaccine, right? Maybe the military can limp along in peacetime without them, but God forbid there's ever a real national emergency that requires a unified response.

> someone whose judgement you want to depend on being able to make quick decisions in a critical situation.

Feel free to have your own opinion, but I have the exact opposite interpretation.

Succumbing to peer pressure is weak-mindedness. Many people didn't want to take it, and knew it was the wrong choice, but did so because of peer pressure and not wanting to face any minor personal difficulty like not being able to see a concert for a few months. This is not an admirable quality.

On the flipside, the people who did what they thought was right regardless of the personal difficulty it posed in their lives have demonstrated a remarkable bit of positive character. These people resisted the greatest government gaslighting event in the history of the world. Being able to say no when all of the institutions of the world are trying to get you to say yes is an honorable quality that shows a strength of will.

I'd be a lot more worried about getting a .30 caliber shot than a covid shot personally. And then having to worry about healthcare for the effects of injury sustained on the job too. $30 something thousand a year (I have no idea what a private makes) isn't really going to do much to attract me either. I will say a proxy war does sound a lot more appealing than something like the Afghanistan conflict where you actually have to go and fight and all that.

Did you see the WSJ-NORC survey recently? It seems that Americans have wised up that patriotism and religion don't pay the bills.

Sorry, but soldiers crying about the COVID vaccine while they get vaxxed against things like ANTHRAX and other non standard stuff is peak comedy to me.

Talk about a bunch of special snowflakes if you draw the line at the COVID shots.

Please note that I don't wish to sidetrack this thread with a Covid debate. My goal here is not to debate Covid or the vaccines, but simply to point out some of the beliefs that exist, that you may not be aware of.

1) You do realize that many people who are against taking the Covid vaccine are not against taking all vaccines, right? Many people are specifically against taking the Covid vaccine for varied reasons including some of the the following: most people have already had Covid and many of them don't think any further medical treatment is warranted, some people might think that not enough time has passed to fully understand the long-term risks of the Covid vaccines, some people might not think that the risks from Covid outweigh the risks of the vaccine, some people are greatly creeped out by the government's insistence to try and vaccinate everybody when they normally can't give half a shit about our healthcare, and as more information about them is coming out over time it seems like the vaccines' benefits were oversold anyway.

2) Regarding a difference with things like the Anthrax vaccine, as far as I know, the Anthrax vaccine uses standard attenuated particles, has been tested over a far greater time period, there's no creepy push to force literally everybody to get it, and Anthrax is far more lethal leading to a radically different risk-management calculation.

3) I have a feeling that your kind of mentality is shared by many people who are in charge, and that lack of knowledge doesn't bode well for us.

Yep. In the Marine Corps when I went through boot camp they called it Physical Conditioning Platoon (PCP), colloquially “Pork Chop Platoon”

Yeah, remedial training blocks (fail to meet the standard, you move to a different phase of training for 3 weeks and try again) weren't uncommon in the military, at least not when I served (granted that's north of 20 years ago now).

Maybe this is a warning sign that the wellbeing of society is falling off a cliff, even though GDP is growing.

This is not sustainable

> Maybe this is a warning sign

This one wasn't enough lmao ?

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/-/media/Images/Health-Information/...

> Trends in obesity among children and adolescents ages 2–19 years, by age: United States, 1963–1965 through 2017–20183

I feel like your statement is too empty to really draw any conclusions from it.

GDP has never been a sign of wellbeing

Well, yes, military recruitment with static pay, benefits, conditions, and standards is unsustainable in a job market for low-end work better than it is calibrated for.

Hence why such conditions tend to produce soneme combination of improved basic pay and benefits (rare), increased signing bonuses, and loosened standards.

(Not sure I see that as a problem for well-being of society, but...)

What's unsustainable about it?

Fat = unhealthy = more stress on the health care system

Fat = lower fertility

Fat = largest contributor in the 3 top leading cause of deaths in the US

&c.

imho it's a symptom of a larger thing, like stress induced over eating in animals. It's a slow suicide, an healthy individual should be able to see it for what it is and act on it, society should be able to see it for what it is and help these individuals, seems like we're doing the complete opposite, mostly for profit

None of those things are inherently unsustainable. In fact, a smaller population that dies earlier is actually more sustainable than a large, long-living population.

Unsustainable as in "humanity will be wiped out ? Clearly no

Unsustainable as in people are shadows of what they could be, people die way earlier than they should, &c ? Definitely

Outliers excluded, the difference between an active/fit 60 years old and someone who's been fat their whole life at the same age is night and day. One has years/decades of healthy life to go, the other has one foot in the grave

If it was an experiment on animals we would have pulled the plug 30 years ago

I agree that if you measure outcomes by life expectancy or activity level, being obese is objectively bad. But we give people agency to make their own decisions, and obesity is a choice. It's both a personal choice, i.e. people choose their lifestyle and diet, and a societal choice, i.e. society chooses not to discourage unhealthy eating habits.

Plenty of choices lead to objectively worse outcomes, but that doesn't mean those choices are unsustainable. It just means they're less than ideal.

A dwindling population eventually reaches 0

https://xkcd.com/605/

It seems more likely that an equilibrium would be reached before the population reaches 0.

It’s funny to see how defensive people are about their body fat %/bmi etc. It is objectively bad for you beyond a certain point and if that “personally offends” you it is more of a you problem than a problem with the person pointing it out.

Yeah it is complicated etc but so are the reasons people smoke or drink but most people don’t give them a hug and a free pass.

Take care of your health, and if taking care if your health is complicated, make it your main project in life.

> It’s funny to see how defensive people are about their body fat

It’s funny to see how society is really busy judging you if you are fat and is also horrified you if you choose surgery to fix the problem. Or cryo. Or any medical intervention at all.

I am not sure if this is puritanjan attitude, or just considered 'cheating'.

People judge their friends and kids for being low energy and call it lazy, but can't even screen for vitamin D defficiency or Long covid that could be causing it.

It's because those people don't see it as addressing the root cause.

Most people do tons of health-negative choices, but eating too much food and subsequent obesity is only one singled out because it's pretty much only one visible, outside of very heavy drug use. People are doing weird moral judgements based on that.

>Yeah it is complicated etc but so are the reasons people smoke or drink but most people don’t give them a hug and a free pass.

No one cares about social drinking, and smoking is considered bad because smokers stink.

Odd to conflate body fat % with bmi though.

Using the latter as a proxy for the former makes strong assumptions around how you're built (musculature, torso length to leg length, broadness of chest, arm length, etc).

Yeah sorry for that - I was using the terms quite colloquially

True

And people say 'oh but BMI is not relevant' it is not if you have the physique of a (an American) Football player and even then.

For most people, BMI is not too far from reality.

Possibly while they're playing. But BMI impacts them as they age and retire. They need to be careful to change their diet, maintain exercise, and avoid getting fat - and after a lifetime of eating massive meals and lifting big, that's a really big lifestyle change that can be hard to make.

You're absolutely correct. It's very common to see players balloon and go overweight once they stop with the activities

Honestly it's probably not a problem at all for all the slow moving aircraft, like strategic transport or a tanker or a helicopter. It's physically easier to drive those than it is to drive an M1 Abrams tank, where you need to, for example, be able to fix the tracks if they get thrown off on a mine.

The demanding stuff like fighters or even the much memed about A-10 will not accept people that do not pass the centrifuge (and a lot of people do not).

Well, it's nicknamed "Chair Force" for a reason.

The vast majority of these recruits won't become pilots. Consider those directing drones, for example.

Actual air crew personnel are a small, single digit percentage of Air Force personnel.

This headline mentions body fat, and the 2nd paragraph mentions specific body fat percentage thresholds. But from what I understand, they're shifting _to_ a system which measures height and waist size with a tape measure, _from_ a prior system which measured waist and neck size with a tape measure. I.e they're throwing around "body fat percentage" as a term, but they're not measuring it with any kind of accuracy, and are favoring a very low tech (and perhaps transparent) measure over one which would be more accurate but expensive, such as hydrostatic weighing or DEXA. To me it's a little crazy that they use a tape measure given how much we spend on the military.

https://www.military.com/military-fitness/fitness-test-prep/...

This system change improves accuracy without increasing cost or complexity. They already are doing these measurements, just adjusting the threshold based on height. The previous system made it so very short people could be very fat so long as they could do the other components, but very tall people had to be rail thin or else automatically fail the test.

Hydrostatic weighting would be a huge mess for MEPS stations.

You think that money goes to grunts?

For those who olforgot the content of the article they surely read, this is for recruits. They allow 1 year of training time to get down to standard weight.

It's the ultimate "boot camp" diet&exercise program.

It will be interesting to see what happens after that first year. I suspect a fair number of those clinically obese recruits will wash-out. Even with strict guidance that's a lot of weight to lose and requires significant mental/lifestyle adjustments.

Isn't everyone (in general) just getting fat and unhealthier?

Of course they'd losen their standards.

I think it's more that they have trouble attracting people. Banking and consulting have no trouble finding fit people.

> Banking and consulting have no trouble finding fit people.

... I'm not sure _banking_ has particularly rigorous fitness requirements.

Large swaths of jobs also have an unspoken requirement of looking good. Notice how most FAANG engineers are fit? Notice how you don't see fat bankers often? Pretty privilege

You start fit.... and then you start getting promoted.

Recruinting in general is getting harder https://www.npr.org/2023/01/18/1149855912/the-navy-has-raise... My guess is that in a few years there will be a foreign legion in the French model (serve some years, gain citizenship)

20+ years of non-stop war will do that. Every 18 year old thinking about service has known nothing but war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a handful of other place, most of which were abandoned and not won. For those with parents who serve, they saw extended and repeated wartime deployments.

Contrast that with my generation (late GenX). The single "big" war growing up was the first Iraq War. It was relatively popular and we "won" the war... the follow-on was no-fly enforcement, but minimal boots on the ground. And we grew up with parents deployed on a regular schedule to Germany or Korea, usually relatively comfortable places.

Isn’t there already some sort of path to citizenship via military service? I suppose that you’d probably have to at least be a resident though.

Yes there is:

https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-milita...

It's not exactly a foreign legion style thing but you can become a citizen via military service.

Not sure what your exactly looking for this to be, but you can already become eligible for citizenship via military service.

https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-milita...

Can you do that from another country? Or do you have to be a resident first?

I'm guessing private mercenary/security companies will become more common in the future, e.g. Blackwater

There is already a path to citizenship by serving in the US Military.

there is, but you need to be a resident already (what I mean is the program being opened to people around the globe)

Rome also utilized mercenaries during its downfall

Foreign legion is not the same.

Arguably the Roman army always had foreigners, and it failed when it stopped trying to assimilate them and just treated them as mercenaries.

I imagine that some roles that used to depend on height and weight requirements are shifting due to remote piloting.

The article has this interesting note:

>Whatever their body composition when they join, new airmen will be subjected to the same annual fitness tests and standards as everyone else.

Which I guess means the Air Force thinks they can get folks who would otherwise not qualify into shape.

> Which I guess means the Air Force thinks they can get folks who would otherwise not qualify into shape

Seems like a safe bet? Personal trainers would probably be a lot more effective if they had as much control over your work life, diet, and exercise routines as the military does over new recruits.

Wow. 26% for men. That's clinically obese.

In my recollection, individuals serving in the Korean Army often aspired to be part of the KATUSA due to the superior treatment and nourishment they received. It appears that there is a worldwide trend of relaxed standards for new military recruits, as evidenced by the reduction of mandatory Korean enlistment for the lower ranks from 21 to 18 months since 2021.

This shift in standards may suggest that modern warfare places less emphasis on physical labor and more on intellectual prowess, such as computing skills. As a result, countries that excel in these areas may be better equipped to handle modern military operations.

Furthermore, military readiness has become increasingly privatized, which may explain why current figures do not align with previous years. Despite this, it is likely that countries are more heavily armed than at any other point in history.

Boot camp seems like it would be one of the better places to actually lose the weight. I've never been, so might be eating a boot, but:

- there's obviously a focus on PT. Maybe more so in the future if they expect more out of shape people

- a lot less daily distraction, with a schedule specifically for PT

- drill instructors who will make you work and push yourself vs. you needing the discipline in a gym yourself

- food is controlled somewhat?

I'm only familiar with USMC boot, and only through friends who served.

They ALL lost massive amounts of body fat. Most looked almost emaciated afterwards. They couldn't really add more PT - that's a huge portion of what they do for the 3 month period.

The initial fitness test (for males) is... 3 Pull-Ups 44 crunches 34 Push-Ups 1.5 mile run in 13:30

Any reasonably fit 18 year old should be able to pass that. Somebody at 26% BF isn't going to complete any of those exercises and be unable to start boot camp.

But, the Air Force minimum fitness level required to GRADUATE from boot camp is only slightly harder than the USMC requirement to START boot camp. Is somebody who started at 26% BF going to gain enough fitness in a few months to meet those levels? I doubt it.

I went through my country's basic and infantry training (admittedly a long time ago). Take it from me: basic is not where you want to do this. You will be struggling with culture shock and under constant psychological stress. You want to be in good shape before you start training.

I found it interesting that they talk about body fat % when that’s notoriously difficult to measure. AFAIK only an MRI is accurate.

Then trying to Google what the actual test is, there’s a lot of advice about how to manipulate water weight to cut enough to pass. So this change is probably way better for those borderline people who were doing unsustainable stuff to pass.

I assume it's just rope and choke same as the other branches.

My son found paradoxically that going into the Army fit and slim was a problem. He couldn't exercise as much or eat properly to maintain. Some training programs involved fasting, and he had nothing to live off of but muscle. He came out of it much lighter and weaker.

Military training regimes aren't made to get the most out of every individual, but to get everyone to an acceptable level.

Is there a problem with a 350lb drone operator? These restrictions make sense for most military enlisted roles but perhaps chunky folks can take on more "sit in your chair all day" type of roles? Not everyone is combat, I mean why would you need even the chaplain to be fit. In the army or navy I get it, you have to actually travel and become a liability but in the airforce, spaceforce and cybercommand there are many roles that never ever require the person be in the field.

Such a person would be at a higher risk of many health issues, which the military would be responsible for providing care for and they might be a liability if a combat situation developed around them. They may also be seen as lacking in self discipline or having other negative personality traits.

That's my point, a drone operator in a trailer in nevada will never be in those situations. Health risk and appearance are a different topic but body fat does not automatically mean unhealthy.

I'd be curious to know what the long term mortality effects are from joining the military vs obesity.

I wonder why they're using body fat percentage instead of BMI. While the two are strongly correlated [1], BMI seems more gender neutral.

[1] https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1...

Because BMI doesn't distinguish between Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Whale. If you're overweight for your height, even if it's solid muscle, it's all the same to BMI.

Different body fat percentages for men and women is likely how they already do it.

When I was 8% body fat, my BMI was 24.8. That's when I realized that BMI, like most office chairs, is tailored for the average population.

It works fine for the general population. We don’t exactly have an epidemic of bodybuilders

But it's the military, so you're going to have a lot more super muscly and jacked guys than the general population.

And it doesn't work well for the general population, anyway; it's a bad metric across the board. If you're very tall or very short, it misrepresents you. There are equally simple measures like waist-to-height ratio that have fewer issues.

See this article: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215#Waist-to-he...

I do not find that BMI would be a good indicator, since (based on my own experience), people in the military are pretty muscular.

BMI works for the average person but cannot differentiate between extra muscle mass and extra fat mass.

on the topic of diversity, BMI often cannot be compared between ethnic/race groups: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968570/

They measure completely different things. BMI is a pure weight to height ratio--someone could have almost no skeletal muscle and have a "better" BMI than someone who works out daily and has heavy muscle density. They're strongly correlated in the statistical sense, but there's still a wide spread of body fat percentage for a given BMI.

My guess is that they use different BMI metrics for men vs women when guaging fitness--that's how they keep things gender fair.

Having a high BMI and a low body fat percentage means that you are likely composed of a lot of muscle weight. I would think that this would correlate highly with physical strength, which I would also think is something we would want for our fighting forces.

> Having a high BMI and a low body fat percentage means that you are likely composed of a lot of muscle weight. I would think that this would correlate highly with physical strength, which I would also think is something we would want for our fighting forces.

It's complicated.

I'm sure that military members are, on average, more muscular than civilians. But they're not typically very jacked compared to body builders or powerlifters.

Moderate strength with high endurance (e.g. crossfit) is much more useful in combat than high strength but low endurance (e.g. powerlifting).

And moderate strength with high endurance doesn't typically result in huge muscles.

Having spent some time in the military, this generally aligns with my observations. Sure - there's some people who are jacked. But most people - even really elite guys - look pretty unassuming.

BMI doesn't distinguish between weight by fat or weight by muscle mass. Someone with a lot of muscles and not a lot of fat can still have a high BMI

I have a BMI of 35 (obese) but have been weight training for 20 years and have a low body fat percentage.

It works as a rough guide as it is easer to calculate than body fat percentage. Most people that go to the gym don't have much muscle; so unless someone is a dedicated bodybuilder or powerlifter it's good enough. You can tell just by looking at someone if they have large amounts of body fat!

BMI wouldn't be a good measure for this. The correlation might be strong, but very fit or muscular people (for instance, weight lifters, fighters etc) can have rather high BMI - and you really don't want to filter those out. Waist-hip ratio might be a good alternative measure.

BMI among fit individuals and athletes, is a terrible indicator of overall health. There's no distinction between a 250lb 6' man whose weight is predominately muscle vs a 250lb 6' man whose weight is predominately fat.

If you look muscular and your BMI is too high, the military sends you to get measured with body calibers. BMI is just used for initial screening.

There are a lot of really stupid things that you can't even waiver at MEMS, so people just lie and they change these rules enough that it's really confusing.

I was a mega POG and we sat at desks. There was absolutely no reason I couldn't be a bit overweight, have asthma, or whatever. OTOH, I wouldn't want anyone operating in a forward area to be a burden on anyone, but the system is already set up for pre-deployment screening (before you ship out you go through a whole thing called SRP).

tl;dr they should let more people in for POG jobs (like mine)

does this mean more powerful ejector seats?

Gonna be bigger parachutes

Modern day Klinger is going to have it rough.

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