Army CFT Mirrors CPAT

The Army has rolled out a Combat Field Test that looks a lot like firefighter physical screening: lift, carry, sprint, crawl, then run again. (army.mil) The test, announced April 22, 2026, is an annual requirement for soldiers in designated combat military occupational specialties. It starts with a one-mile run, then 30 dead-stop push-ups and a 100-meter sprint. (army.mil) After that come 16 lifts of a 40-pound sandbag onto a 65-inch platform, a 50-meter carry with two five-gallon Army water cans weighing 40 pounds each, and a 50-meter movement drill with a 25-meter high crawl and a 25-meter 3-to-5-second rush. Soldiers then finish with a second one-mile run and must complete the full sequence within 30 minutes while wearing the Army Combat Uniform and boots. (innovation.army.mil) Fire departments use a similar idea in the Candidate Physical Ability Test, or CPAT, a standardized entry test built around job tasks performed continuously under time pressure. The International Association of Fire Fighters says CPAT was developed to measure whether candidates can safely perform essential firefighter duties. (iaff.org) CPAT uses eight events, including a stair climb, hose drag, equipment carry, ladder raise and extension, forcible entry, search, rescue and ceiling breach-and-pull. In California, the Firefighter Candidate Testing Center says candidates must complete those eight events in 10 minutes and 20 seconds to earn a card of completion used by more than 170 departments. (iaff.org) (fctconline.org 1) (fctconline.org 2) The Army is not calling the Combat Field Test a firefighter exam, and its sequence is different from CPAT’s stair, hose and ladder stations. But the overlap is plain: both tests stack loaded work, short bursts of speed and task changes without long recovery. (innovation.army.mil) (iaff.org) That makes the new Army test a useful training analog for people preparing for CPAT-style hiring tests, especially when they need practice moving from carries and lifts into crawls, sprints and running on a clock. The Army has used nearly the same event chain before for its Expert Physical Fitness Assessment tied to expert badges, with a 30-minute standard for the Expert Soldier Badge and Expert Field Medical Badge. (army.mil) The larger Army fitness system changed last year, when the Army Fitness Test became the service-wide test of record on June 1, 2025, replacing the Army Combat Fitness Test. The new Combat Field Test sits beside that broader test as a combat-arms-specific standard aimed at designated specialties rather than the whole force. (army.mil 1) (army.mil 2) For anyone comparing the two, the lesson is simple and concrete: repeated loaded efforts and fast recovery now sit at the center of both the Army’s new field test and the firefighter screening model it most closely resembles. (innovation.army.mil) (iaff.org)