Major Nick Barringer says the Army’s new OPAT is garbage, but the Army’s leadership can’t see why that matters
By Thomas E. Ricks
October 20, 2016
facebook
Major Nick Barringer says the Army’s new OPAT is garbage, but the Army’s leadership can’t see why that matters
By Jim Gourley
Army Major Nick Barringer recently took his service’s Occupational Physical Assessment Test (OPAT) to task in an Army Times op-ed. Comparing the qualifying metrics for the “heavy” category of most combat arms occupations to peer-reviewed studies in physiology, Barringer concludes that the Army will accept men and women into the infantry if they can demonstrate “the lower body power of mediocre 12-year-old, the upper body power of an elite 14-year-old, the strength of an average 13-to-15-year-old who works out, and the endurance level of a fit senior citizen.” With a doctorate in kinesiology and experience developing fitness programs in the 75th Ranger Regiment, he’s the physical fitness equivalent of a NASA engineer coming into mission control with a clipboard full of numbers and announcing “we have a problem.”
