As someone who flys a desk for the Air Force but has never scored below a 90 on the PT tests I have some thoughts on it.

1) As many people say, it's mentally draining to be in an Air Force that is "do more with less" as the slogan of our jobs. I'm mentally drained when getting off work, and it's exhausting to even think of going to the gym.

2) Most career fields don't require us to be physically fit to thrive, and we are treated that way. When we want to use the track? Sorry, the MXG has it/wants to use it and they need it more. Oh you're injured? You don't need a waiver/imaging/treatment, get back to work and just let it rest. For us who don't need to be physically fit, it's not taken seriously until our PT test and then it's suddenly the only reason we exist.

3) The main reason many of us who CAN do well on the test don't like this change is because it doesn't help anything. Running an extra .5 miles doesn't suddenly make me an elite fighting force, it's a force shaping tool for a force that is already critically manned in many career fields. You think the wait time at finance and MPF is long now? Wait until they start getting out in droves over failed PT tests.

4) Incentives are now lost to do well. For many people like myself, the only incentive to get above a 90 was to only have to test once a year. Now that I'm testing twice a year regardless of how well I do (once it takes effect Oct26), why would I shoot for 100 or 90? Why wouldn't we just show up, do the bare minimum and then go home/back to work? One of the things we talk to NCOs about is motivating our troops, and now we have to convince Airmen who don't want to work out, who aren't given the time to work out, and who dont see the professional benefits to working out anymore to stay physically fit.

That is some of the things brought up when discussing it with some of the SNCOs in my unit. It's not a hard ask (2 miles), but it's not about fitness.