Washington — Most Women in Marine Combat Roles Pass Fitness Tests

One year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed that women serving in Marine Corps combat roles meet the same physical fitness standards as men, new data from the service show most of those women are passing, according to a report by NBC News.

The figures, described in an NBC News segment reported by correspondent Yasmin Vossoughian, indicate that women assigned to combat military occupational specialties are meeting or exceeding the equalized benchmarks Hegseth ordered roughly a year earlier. NBC News did not publish the underlying pass-rate figures or raw test scores alongside the segment, and HTT News could not independently verify specific percentages.

What did Hegseth's order change?

Hegseth's directive eliminated separate, lower physical standards that had applied to women in combat roles, requiring instead that all Marines in those positions clear the identical benchmarks used to evaluate men. The move applied to fitness testing tied to combat occupational specialties rather than to general-purpose physical fitness tests used across the broader force.

What does the new Marine Corps data show?

According to NBC News, the year-old data set marks the first substantial look at how women in combat roles have performed since the standards took effect. The network's reporting describes the results as showing that most women in those roles are passing the toughened tests, with many meeting or exceeding the equalized scores. NBC News has not detailed a breakdown by specific combat specialty, unit, or numerical pass rate in the material reviewed for this report.

Why does this matter for combat-role assignments?

The equal-standards policy was framed by the Pentagon as a test of whether uniform physical requirements, rather than separate scoring tracks by sex, could still allow qualified women to serve in front-line combat jobs. The new data, as characterized by NBC News, offers an early answer: a majority of women assigned to those roles are clearing the bar that was raised to match male standards. The report does not address retention rates, injury data, or how many women left combat specialties rather than test under the new benchmarks.

How does this compare with the previous system?

Under the prior framework, physical standards for combat roles differed by sex, a structure defenders said accounted for physiological differences while critics argued it created a lower bar for women in jobs requiring identical battlefield tasks. The shift to one standard was central to Hegseth's argument that combat readiness should not vary by the sex of the service member. NBC News' report does not include comparative data from before the change, so the extent of any statistical shift in pass rates over time is not established in the source material.

What to watch next

• Whether the Marine Corps releases detailed, specialty-by-specialty pass-rate figures beyond the summary described by NBC News
• Whether other service branches, such as the Army or Navy, move toward similar unified standards for combat roles
• Whether attrition or reclassification data emerges showing how many women left combat specialties after the standards changed
• Any formal Pentagon assessment of the policy's first full year, which would provide the numerical detail current reporting lacks

Watch the NBC News report for Vossoughian's full segment on the Marine Corps data.