WASHINGTON (PNN) - October 14, 2025 - Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth says he has replaced overweight National Guard troops after a viral photo showed them being deployed in Chicago, Illinois.
“Standards are back,” the Secretary of War posted on X, confirming a screenshot of a story about the action taken against the soldiers.
Several fat troops deployed to bolster security around ICE facilities were pictured in the Democrat city last week.
Two days later, the National Guard posted a statement, saying all of its soldiers and airmen are required to meet service-specific height, weight and physical standards at all times.
It said, “When mobilizing for active duty, members go through a validation process to ensure they meet requirements. On rare occasions when members are found not in compliance, they will not go on the mission. They will be returned to their home station and replacements who do meet standards will take their places.”
The Army has weight-for-height standards, for example, a male soldier aged 17 to 20 who is 5'10" can weigh no more than 178 lbs. If a soldier fails this standard chart, then a body fat percentage calculation, which also takes into account the soldier’s abdominal circumference, will decide whether he or she is still eligible to join.
Last month, speaking at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, Secretary Hegseth told the country's top generals that he was “tired of seeing fat troops”.
“If the Secretary of War can do regular, hard PT, then so can every member of our joint force,” the Secretary of War said.
Secretary Hegseth also said these new rules are “not about preventing women from serving,” but added that the physical standards needed to be gender neutral.
“If women can make it, excellent, if they cannot - then so be it... it will also mean that weak men won't qualify. This is combat,” said Secretary Hegseth.
Secretary Hegseth said standard training guidelines will be restored “to what (they) should be - scary, tough, disciplined,” where drill sergeants “can put their hands on recruits.”
He doubled down that each service member and department will require high-level physical requirements, adding a combat arms field test.
A Pentagon spokesman told the Daily Mail that height and weight requirements depend on the service. They pointed to a body fat calculator for the Army that was created in 2023.
The website requires soldiers to put in information such as age, sex, weight and height to determine a final number.
Further instructions include a “one-site tape test” or a “multiple-site” body fat tape test.
If they fail both, they can request a body fat assessment via the DXA, InBody 770 and The Bod Pod - all formal body composition analysis tools, measuring things like body fat, muscle mass and more.
The Pentagon says, if a soldier fails all of the above, (he or she) will then be referred to the army weight control program.
“In less than 24 hours, Texas National Guardsmen mobilized for the Federal Protection Mission”' a department spokesman told the military news website Task & Purpose.
“The speed of the response necessitated a concurrent validation process, during which we identified a small group of service members who were not in compliance and have been replaced,” said the unnamed spokesman.