DOD launches fitness review, calls Mark Milley ‘corpulent’ amid push for stricter standards

Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot lobbed a shot at the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, as he explained Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s new review of physical fitness and grooming standards.

“Unfortunately, the U.S. military’s high standards on body composition and other metrics eroded in recent years, particularly during the tenure of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who set a bad example from the top through his own personal corpulence. Secretary Hegseth is committed to restoring high standards, and this review is the first step in doing so,” Ullyot said in a statement to Fox News Digital. 

The Pentagon revoked Milley’s security detail and clearance in late January. 

The review comes after the secretary has voiced concerns that fitness standards have eroded, and questioned whether mismatched standards for men and women are affecting readiness. 

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The memo specifically calls out protocols for beards.

It directs the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness to look at “existing standards set by the Military Departments pertaining to physical fitness, body composition, and grooming, which includes but is not limited to beards.”

The memo directs the review to examine how standards have changed since 2015. 

“Our troops will be fit – not fat. Our troops will look sharp – not sloppy. We seek only quality – not quotas,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X late on Wednesday. 

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“That will be part of one of the first things we do at the Pentagon – is reviewing that in a gender-neutral way – the standards ensuring readiness and meritocracy is front and center,” Hegseth promised in January. 

In December 2015, the military opened up all combat roles to women. In a podcast interview shortly before he was tapped as secretary, Hegseth said the U.S. “should not have women in combat roles.” But during his confirmation hearing, he clarified that in ground combat roles, women should have to meet the same standards as men. 

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“Whether it is a man or woman, they have to meet the same high standards,” he said. “In any place where those things have been eroded, or courses or criteria have been changed to meet quotas . . . that’s the kind of review I’m talking about. Not whether women should have access to ground combat.” 

The review could possibly lead to changes to the Army Combat Fitness Test, which is currently scored under age- and gender-specific requirements. That became the Army’s standard fitness test in 2023, after decades of a physical fitness test that imposed the same standards on men and women. 

The current test requires men ages 17-21 to run two miles in 22 minutes, and women of the same age to do it in 23 minutes and 22 seconds.

The service branches began making accommodations for recruits who don’t meet physical fitness standards in recent years as a way to address the recruiting crisis. The Army and Navy offered pre-boot camp training for those who did not meet physical fitness or testing scores. But those recruits had to meet the same standards in order to graduate from training courses and serve. 

“When I was in the Army, we kicked out good soldiers for having naked women tattooed on their arms, and today we are relaxing the standards on shaving, dreadlocks, man buns, and straight-up obesity,” Hegseth wrote in his book ‘The War on Warriors.’ 

“Piece by piece, the standards had to go … because of equity,” he added.

The service branches have begun allowing troops to sport different hairstyles, in large part due to female service members who argued that the constant tight, low bun was leading to hair loss. In recent years, the Army has begun allowing cornrows and twists after female service members argued that the hairstyles were cheaper and easier to maintain.