Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday ordered a department-wide overview of present requirements for every navy department on bodily health, physique composition, and grooming — together with on beards, Breitbart Information has solely realized.
“We should stay vigilant in sustaining the requirements that allow the women and men of our navy to guard the American individuals and our homeland because the world’s most deadly and efficient preventing pressure,” Hegseth mentioned in a March 12, 2025, memorandum ordering the overview.
“Our adversaries aren’t rising weaker, and our duties aren’t rising much less difficult. This overview will illuminate how the Division has maintained the extent of requirements required over the latest previous and the trajectory of any change in these requirements,” he added.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot added in a press release to Breitbart Information:
Sadly, the U.S. navy’s excessive requirements on physique composition and different metrics eroded lately, significantly through the tenure of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who set a nasty instance from the highest by means of his personal private corpulence. Secretary Hegseth is dedicated to restoring excessive requirements, and this overview is step one in doing so.
Hegseth directed the Underneath Secretary of Protection for Personnel and Readiness (USD(P&R)) to assemble the prevailing aforementioned requirements set by every navy department, overview them and the way they’ve modified during the last decade, since January 1, 2015.
The overview may even have a look at why these requirements modified and the impression of these adjustments.
Learn the memo:
Speedy Power-Broad Evaluate of Army Requirements by Kristina Wong on Scribd
Hegseth has made returning the navy to its core mission of warfighting his prime precedence, which incorporates having forces prepared and match to combat.
Hegseth spoke concerning the significance of requirements at his affirmation listening to in January, telling Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) that “guaranteeing that requirements are equal and excessive is of significance to [the president] and nice significance to me.”
“As a result of in these floor fight roles, what’s true is that the burden of the ruck in your again doesn’t change. The load of the 155 spherical that it’s a must to carry doesn’t change. The load of the 240-Bravo machine gun you may need to hold doesn’t change,” he mentioned.
“And so whether or not it’s a man or a girl, they’ve to satisfy the identical excessive requirements. And Senator, in anyplace the place these issues have been eroded or in programs standards have been modified as a way to meet quotas — racial quotas or gender quotas — that’s placing a concentrate on one thing apart from readiness, requirements, meritocracy, and lethality.”
He additionally expressed help for gender-neutral bodily health requirements in response to the job, and never by every other determinant.
“The requirements have to be the identical, they usually have to be excessive. And so they have to be set by the individuals closest to the issue set, closest to the understanding of what’s required by that job. Commanders, 10 commanding officers, and co-COMs and elsewhere who perceive the fact of what face, that’s the suggestions we should always get. That’s what needs to be enshrined and enforced,” he mentioned.
“And no different set of political prerogatives — once I discuss about eradicating politics, ideological or political prerogatives — ought to contribute to these determinations. Nothing apart from the execution of the mission.”
Since changing into protection secretary, Hegseth has highlighted the significance of bodily health by carving day trip throughout journeys to conduct bodily coaching with troops.
In Germany final month, he carried out PT with the tenth Particular Forces Group. The images from the session went viral.
Observe Breitbart Information’s Kristina Wong on ”X”, Reality Social, or on Fb.
