They added three new requirements: Recruits must now sign their OPAT score cards, recruiting centers must designate someone to review score cards, and a guidance counselor has to validate both the recruit’s signature and the recruiter’s for anything suspicious. Though the investigation took several months, USAREC changed procedures in May 2017, to keep it from continuing to happen as they were still working to understand the scope of the issue. “The recruiters thought it would not be an issue once the future soldiers got to basic training, nor did they believe they would be punished for their non-compliance,” the investigator wrote. Until OPAT came online, there was no specific fitness test to determine whether a recruit was in good enough shape to do a specific job in the Army.īut its implementation coincided with the Army opening its last men-only occupational specialties, not only creating a gender-neutral standard for any Army job, but encouraging recruits to train to the requirements before they enlist. They figured the recruits would sort out their fitness levels at basic, the way they had been for decades, the investigator wrote. Most of the recruiters implicated in the investigation knew the requirements and had the resources to administer the tests, the report found ― “However, they consciously decided not to comply with the standard.” “Many recruiters perceived that they were under pressure by the mission increase and the requirement to fill training seats during a historically low period of accessions into the Army to ship recruits as quickly as possible,” according to the report.Īt the time, the Army was in the midst of a grueling recruitment year: To help the service reach its 476,000 active-duty end strength goal in 2017, the recruiting mission jumped from 62,000 to 68,000, after President Obama signed that year’s National Defense Authorization Act right before Christmas ― three months into the fiscal year.Ī week later, the OPAT came online, and recruiters had to add it to their process to get recruits ready to ship. There was to be one administrator and one grader for the test, per regulation, but recruiters who gave statements said that they were giving the test themselves to multiple recruits, with no grader, and then sending off their scores without getting them validated by their leadership.
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“Despite being trained, many recruiters did not fully grasp how to administer the OPAT or the significance of the testing requirement,” the investigating officer wrote, and so either didn’t give the test, or let recruits ship if they’d failed it.Ī misunderstanding on how to administer it was part of the problem.
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