Pete Hegseth wanted a tougher standard.

He got one.

Now he has the results.

More than 91 percent of the women serving in Marine Corps combat-arms specialties who have taken the new Physical Fitness Test passed it.

They didn’t pass a women’s test.

They didn’t get a female scoring curve.

They were measured against the male standard Hegseth wanted.

And they passed.

According to Marine Corps data reported by The War Horse, 91.38 percent of female Marines in combat-arms specialties met or exceeded the required 210 points on the new test.

The figure for male Marines was 96.53 percent.

That’s about a five-point gap.

It’s also a long way from women being physically incapable of meeting the standard.

First, understand what changed

There has been enough smoke around this issue to hide a battalion.

Women serving in combat jobs weren’t suddenly ordered to meet the same occupational requirements as men.

Those requirements were already supposed to be sex-neutral.

What changed was the Marine Corps Physical Fitness Test.

For years the Corps, like the other services, scored its general fitness test differently according to sex and age.

Hegseth wanted that changed for combat troops.

Fair enough.

If you’re carrying a machine gun, artillery round or wounded Marine, the load doesn’t get lighter because you’re male or female.

So the Corps issued MARADMIN 613/25.

Beginning Jan. 1, Marines in designated combat-arms specialties would be scored using the male, age-normed PFT standard. They also had to score at least 210 points out of 300.

No excuses.

No separate female curve.

Here’s the bar.

Get over it.

Four hundred women stepped up

According to the data, 422 women were serving in the affected Marine combat specialties.

Four hundred had taken the test.

And 91.38 percent passed.

Do the arithmetic and you’re talking about roughly 365 women making the standard.

That’s not somebody’s opinion.

That’s a scoreboard.

There is a caution here.

I have not found these results in a publicly released Marine Corps report.

I’d like the Marines to release the whole thing.

Show us the raw numbers.

Show us scores by MOS.

Show us infantry.

Show us artillery.

Show us reconnaissance.

Show us active duty and Reserve.

Show us the failures, too.

That’s what data are for.

Because 91.38 percent tells us something.

The underlying numbers could tell us much more.

This doesn’t settle women in combat

Let’s not turn one fitness test into something it isn’t.

A three-mile run isn’t combat.

Neither are pull-ups or a plank.

A PFT doesn’t tell you who can hump a heavy load through miserable terrain after three hours of sleep.

It doesn’t tell you who can drag a wounded Marine out of a burning vehicle.

It doesn’t tell you about long-term injury rates, endurance in the field or whether a rifle company is more or less effective because women are in it.

Those are legitimate questions.

Study them.

Measure them.

Publish the results.

But don’t move the goalposts when you don’t like the score.

Hegseth himself has made the standard the centerpiece of the argument.

Before becoming defense secretary, he was much more categorical.

“I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles,” he said on a podcast before his confirmation.

Once in office, the argument increasingly became about standards.

Good.

Standards we can measure.

The military has been here before

This argument is older than many of the Marines taking the test.

Every time the military opens another door, somebody predicts disaster.

Then eventually the rhetoric runs into reality.

The Pentagon opened all combat occupations to women a decade ago.

Since then, women have graduated from Army Ranger School under the same graduation requirements as men. Women have served in infantry, armor and artillery units. Women fly fighters and attack aircraft.

That doesn’t mean every woman can do those jobs.

Most can’t.

Neither can most men.

That’s why you have standards.

The military shouldn’t lower them to achieve a social objective.

It shouldn’t raise them selectively to achieve one, either.

Figure out what the job requires.

Write the standard.

Apply it to everybody.

Then live with the results.

Now comes the Pentagon study

The Defense Department is conducting another review of women in ground combat.

Fine.

Do it right.

Look at injuries.

Look at attrition.

Look at retention.

Look at strength requirements.

Look at unit readiness.

Look at what infantry Marines actually carry instead of what somebody in Washington thinks they carry.

And above all, publish the data.

If women are failing somewhere, say so.

If men are failing somewhere, say that too.

If a standard isn’t tough enough for combat, raise it.

But raise it for everybody.

That’s how a military standard earns its name.

The first Marine Corps PFT results don’t settle the argument over women in combat.

They do settle one small piece of it.

Hegseth wanted combat-arms Marines judged against the same physical fitness standard.

The Corps put the bar at 210.

Four hundred women stepped up to it.

About 91 percent made it.

That’s the thing about setting a standard.

Sometimes the people you expect to fail don’t.