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You just made a point and then contradicted it in the same post... You made a great point about "looking fit" vs "being fit" but then early on you talk about what a "fit soldier (Airman, Marine, Seaperson) should look like" in your opinion. How about measruing a person's fitness based on their performance instead of how you think they should look? How do you know that guy can't do 69 pushups and situps? Have you actually seen him try or are you just judging him by his skinny frame? I've seen skinny dudes max out the PT test and I've seen fat dudes max out the PT test (minus the tape). That is the biggest problem with the fitness test, the Air Force assumes everyone looks the same and no one cares about actual performance (sounds familiar). The tape measure should be thrown out all together! Why? because if strength, power, flexibility, blah blah is important in combat, tell me how someone with a 32-in waist can pass the PT test by running a 13:36 1.5, 44 pushups and 42 situps, but someone can run a 10 min 1.5, 67 pushups and 69 situps and still fail the test because they have a 39.5 inch waist (yes I've seen people max the cardio and muscle assessment with that big of waist...it doesn't necessarily mean "fat"). I've seen people "fail" the PT test with a "passing score" because they didn't get the "minimum component" in one of the sections...thats right...fail with a score of 90!...thats why the Air Force changed it so you get 0 points if you get below the minimum component (yet they still put the times, reps on the fitness charts with a 0 next to it). How does that make sense to anyone? Don't believe for one second that the Air Force cares about performance, flexibility, strength, agility for combat operations...lets be honest, most of our deployed AF brethren aren't out on foot patrols engaging the enemy in hand-to-hand combat (although many are). When is the last time anyone on this board had to run more than 600ft in the combat zone besides an egress from an aircraft? The Air Force will even try to make you believe that the new fitness standards are about controlling rising health care costs...that too is a joke. If that is the case, with these new fitness standards in place, we should actually see a drop in health care costs...(in theory)...won't happen with all the smokers, dippers and drinkers we have in the Air Force along with the fattening fast food joints all over base. I'm betting the Army and Marines have the same rising health care costs...and they've had this sort of PT test for decades. The guy in the picture could (based on how he "looks" compared to how a "combat soldier" should look) could fail with a score of 80 (fails pushups/situps)...is he a health risk? The Air Force Fitness test as it is today is a force shaping tool designed to have an excuse to kick people out for not meeting standards. It isn't a tough test, but people do fail it so it gives fodder to the boards. Once the Air Force has its numbers in order, the fitness test will change again...and then they'll just worry about just looking good again. I'd be curious to see how many of the RIFd personnel had negative fitness score quality indicators (as the Air Force likes to call it) on their records...

Hearing this morning, case dismissed in 6.9 seconds.

Scoobs, so far I've been in the guard for about 3 weeks, 2 of them I was TDY. I can't speak too much to the big differences yet, however from what I've seen so far, this is going to be a much better fit for me.