Airmen who defuse and dispose of bombs in combat will now have a gender-neutral fitness test starting next month, marking the second career field in the service to have a job-specific physical standard.
Explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, airmen and qualified officers will no longer take part in the standard Air Force fitness test and will be required to do a 1,000-meter row, 20-pound medicine ball toss and a trap bar lift instead of the service’s standard 1.5-mile run, pushups and situps.
“Explosive ordnance disposal has been added as the next combat arms career field to require special sex- and age-neutral fitness standards,” the Air Force said in a news release. “These requirements acknowledge that sustained endurance is necessary to tackle long hours in physically and mentally taxing conditions.”
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The changes come after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered in a March memo that all combat arms positions “must be sex-neutral, based solely on the operational demands of the occupation.” It also comes after Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters earlier this month that the Department of Defense is currently reviewing the possibility of a joint fitness test for all services and “evaluating standards across the board.”
The new fitness standards for explosive ordnance disposal airmen had been in the works well before Hegseth’s tenure — stretching back to 2015. Airmen were already taking an unofficial version of the test over the past year.
The only other career field to have job-specific physical standards is the Air Force’s special warfare community, which also began developing those a decade ago.
Notably, the number of female EODs in the service is small. A 2024 news release from the Air Force stated at that time that women made up “less than 2% of the career field’s population.”
Rose Riley, an Air Force spokesperson, said in a statement to Military.com on Tuesday that presently “roughly 3% of the EOD career field is comprised of women.”
The new 1,000-meter row is for measuring cardiovascular activity and is meant to simulate “bombing range explosive hazard removal,” the service said. The 20-pound medicine ball toss is meant to prepare airmen for tasks such as robot use, ladder climbs and evacuation of casualties.
The trap bar lift is five repetitions of weight ranging from 150 to 360 pounds to simulate “bomb suit operations,” the service detailed. The final event — the Gruseter — is a drop, roll, lift and run drill with a 30-pound vest and a 50-pound sandbag. It involves a 15-meter run for five rounds to prepare EODs for situations in which “personnel may need to quickly and efficiently move heavy equipment in high-stress situations,” the service said in the news release.
“Maintaining our strategic advantage is about building a ready force capable of engaging against any threat to the United States across the spectrum of operations from competition through crisis and, if deterrence fails, to prevail in conflict,” Brig. Gen. Brian Hartless, the Air Force director of civil engineers, said in the news release. “Our EOD airmen are crucial to preserving our nation’s security.”
Scores are measured for initial EOD training, intermediate-level training and graduate level, the Air Force said. The test is slated to go into effect Aug. 1 when the assessment will be part of airmen’s official service record.
Related: Hegseth Has Ordered a Combat Standards Review. It’s Unclear How It Might Apply to All the Services.
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