How many points does it take to win a basketball game?

Male Infantry Officer

“Just set the standard.”

“As long as they can meet the standard.”

“We’re not lowering the standard.”

The Marine Corps remained steadfastly dedicated to “the standard” throughout the research period. Yet, defining that “standard” proved interminably difficult. Why?

Virtually every standard in the Marine Corps revolves around one thing – combat effectiveness. Makes sense, right? How hard could it possibly be?

One infantry officer surmised the complexity of this by asking, “how many points does it take to win a basketball (or any) game?” Obviously the answer is, “one more than the other team”. The final score could be anything, you just need to be better than the other team. The same applies to combat.

Standards for how fast to run, how long to run, how many baskets to shoot or how hard to throw a ball all contribute to one thing – winning. Likewise in the military, how fast you run, how strong you are, how many miles you hike and how much weight you carry all contribute to one thing – winning.

Unlike a basketball game, there are no set rules in combat. The way to win – and the rules by which your opponent plays – varies with every battle, every war. So Marines must be prepared for anything.

Only in combat can the efficacy of a military training program possibly be proved, but even then the connection between recruit training and disciplined enterprise can be inferred only tenuously. Boot camp cannot instill valor. It can at best habituate a young Marine to a certain kind of stress (that which approximates the erratic, capricious, wildly oscillating stresses of combat).

Josiah Bunting, original 1980 Harper’s Magazine; reprinted by The Washington Post

The quote speaks to boot camp, but the same can be said for enlisted infantry training. This is the focus of this post. There are standards across every aspect of the Marine Corps. Their complexity deserves in depth attention in separate posts:

• To enter the Marine Corps;
• To graduate boot camp;
• To graduate infantry training (ITB);
• To perform well in the operating forces ( or the “fleet”);
• To stay in the Marine Corps; and,
• To get promoted.

As mentioned previously, there were only three graded events at Infantry Training Battalion (ITB) (when women first arrived in 2013)¹:

• Physical Fitness Test (male minimum passing score)
• Combat Fitness Test (male minimum passing score)
• 20 kilometer hike, with 82-87 pounds, in 5 hours (2.5 miles/hour)²

There is a lot that these tests fail to accomplish, especially when evaluating how a Marine might perform in the operating forces. But first, let’s look at what they do accomplish.

Both the Physical Fitness Test (PFT) and Combat Fitness Test (CFT) are required for every Marine, each year. There are different standards for men and women (to this day). At ITB, Marines took these tests twice – once at the beginning and once at the end of training. At ITB, all Marines (regardless of gender) had to pass the male minimum standard.³

The PFT consists of three events. To receive a passing score, a male Marine had to complete 1) 3 pull-ups, 2) 40 sit-ups and 3) a three mile run in 33 minutes. However, a Marine must achieve a higher than minimum score in at least one event to pass. The PFT tests aerobic fitness.⁴

Until 2008, the Marine Corps had no test for anaerobic fitness. The CFT attempted to fill this gap. “The CFT is designed to standardize the assessment of common battlefield tasks.”

The CFT also has three events. To receive a passing score, a male Marine must complete 1) an 800 yard run (in boots and camouflage trousers) in 4 minutes 13 seconds (4:13); lift a 30 pound ammunition can overhead 33 times and 3) complete a “maneuver under fire” course in 3 minutes 58 seconds (3:58). If you are curious, I highly recommend checking out this video of the CFT.

The 20 kilometer hike made sense at ITB, as hiking has long been an integral part of the infantry. It would also become a driving indicator of a Marine’s ability to graduate ITB.

So what don’t these tests accomplish? Since the PFT and CFT are required of all Marines, and the minimum (male) standard remains the same for all (male) Marines, these tests were not a good metric of how well a Marine performed at ITB or would perform in the fleet.⁵ The physical requirements for an infantry Marine far exceed any non-ground combat Marine.

To be fair, the minimum standard isn’t really accepted anywhere in the Marine Corps. A tug of war exists between the need to have a minimum standard, and the Marine Corps’ cultural desire for “exceeding the standard” to be the standard. This extends beyond the Marine Corps (or perhaps the Marine Corps extends its influence beyond itself).

When I was in college, I remember sitting in my ROTC class when our senior officer, a Navy captain, (equivalent to a Marine colonel) walked in. Striding across the classroom, he posed several questions,

Even success on the PFT did not necessarily equate to success at ITB. Operations Officer at the time, (then) Major Larry Lowman,

The higher your PFT score, especially pull-ups (12+), you weren’t going to graduate from ITB. If you were able to pass the O Course (Obstacle Course), that was a good indicator that you weren’t going to graduate. If you look at body mass, if you were able to pull yourself up and climb the rope, you were generally lighter and shorter . . . If you were a body type that was heavier set, a little stockier, you were also more able to carry load over distance for time. 

Lawrence Lowman, Operations Officer, ITB-East, 2013

It really came down to the hike. Having the ability to carry weight over distance was the single biggest determiner of success at ITB. Not pull-ups, rope climbing or running fast. Ironically, when recruiting women to go through ITB, the Marine Corps sought women who could do pull-ups.

The Marine Corps also demanded that Marines be within height and weight standards. The Marine Corps did not permit women to continue training if they failed to meet their height and weight requirement. However, the Marine Corps discovered (upon conclusion of the research) that women who exceeded weight standards were 1.78 times more likely to pass the 20 kilometer hike.⁶

But this was all looking back. None of this data existed when the first women arrived.

This was the dilemma in which (then) Lieutenant Colonel Wallis found himself. The Defense Secretary wanted “rigorous analysis of factual data regarding the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for the position“. The Marine Corps wanted to “see if they could make it”. The chasm in between needed attention. Wallis wanted to bring in third party observers – objective individuals with academic backgrounds who could identify the variables necessary and conduct the “rigorous analysis” he believed the Marine Corps would need. He wanted to look at physiological variables such as height and weight, type and frequency of injuries, intangible variables such as grit.

He would not receive the resources to do so. Instead, he would focus on the things he could control.

FOOTNOTES

¹There were academic requirements and weapons proficiency requirements. However, it was assumed that men and women would be equally capable of meeting these. Therefore, focus centered on the physical.

²“Marine Corps Force Integration Plan Line of Effort 2 (Expanded ELT Research Studies): Research Assessment & Findings Report”, Training and Education Command, U.S. Marine Corps, 2 Jul 2015.

³The debate about whether and why the “male” standard was “the” standard remained intense during the research and policy development period. In reality, because the standard had been entirely male until women entered, the standard was the male standard. The challenge was quantifying that standard.

⁴Standards for both the PFT and CFT (men and women) have increased since women have been integrated into the ground combat arms. The links in this post reference the 2015 PFT and CFT manuals.

⁵Training and Education Command would correlate some of the CFT events to successful completion of ITB. These would be included in the policy developed as part of women’s permanent integration.

⁶“SOI Hiking Females”, Training and Education Command, U.S. Marine Corps, 2015. During the research period, a colleague of mine would argue vehemently on behalf of these women. She argued that they should be allowed to complete training and that it was their weight that enabled them to succeed on the hikes. She was unsuccessful. It would take two more years, but the Marine Corps would update height and weight standards for women in 2016.