The Army, in its latest Combat Fitness Test, is reinstituting separate measures for men’s and women’s performance, admitting a single standard cannot be achieved.

Changes to the physical fitness test began a decade ago when soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan were failing at basic battlefield tasks. The Army, at first, sought a gender-neutral test but saw increasing rates of failure among female soldiers. In the newest version, dubbed ACFT 3.0, a tiered system will be tested that awards soldiers in five performance categories on a curve against their same-gender peers.

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