ARLINGTON, Va. — The Pentagon has failed the military’s new waist-to-height standard by a margin of 59.26 points, according to Department of War facilities officials, who said Thursday that the building has been enrolled in a body composition program and is expected to show measurable progress before the end of the fiscal year, plus or minus the fiscal year.
In July, the Army replaced its height and weight tables and tape test with a waist-to-height ratio, under which soldiers whose waist measurement divided by their height reaches 0.55 or higher are retested by a second team the same day and, if the result is confirmed, enrolled in the Army Body Composition Program. Under requirements reported this month, service members nominated to attend Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “State of the Force” address on Sept. 30 must pass a fitness test, meet the waist-to-height requirement, and maintain impeccable grooming.
Officials with the department’s Facilities Lethality Directorate said they decided to measure the Pentagon after concluding that the building in which the standard is administered should be able to meet it. “We cannot ask the force to meet a standard that the building it reports to is failing by a factor of 108,” said Renata Fulk, the directorate’s acting chief of structural readiness.
Each of the Pentagon’s five outer walls is 921 feet long, giving the building a waist of 4,605 feet, which the directorate measured at navel height, defined for the purposes of the assessment as the second floor. The building stands about 77 feet tall. Its ratio, 59.81, exceeds the limit by a factor of 108.7. A confirmation team measured the building again the same duty day and recorded a waist of 4,605.2 feet, a difference the directorate attributed to “a flag.” Officials said that to pass at its current waist, the Pentagon would need to stand 8,372.7 feet tall, or 1.59 miles, plus or minus a floor. To pass at its current height, it would need a waist of 42.4 feet, or 8.5 feet per side, which Fulk said would leave room for “most of one office.”
The building began its prescribed regimen Monday. Each morning at 5 a.m., 1,200 employees walk the Pentagon’s 17.5 miles of corridors three times, an exercise the directorate counts as cardio for the building. The building was also scheduled to perform push-ups, of which it has completed 0.0, with a margin of error of plus or minus 0.0. Through Wednesday, the Pentagon had lost no measurable waist and had gained 0.04 inches of height, which Fulk attributed to a new antenna and described as “momentum.”
Dr. Marjorie Teller, director of the Center for Measured Outcomes, said the result was consistent with the Center’s earlier work on federal architecture, which found that 96.3 percent of government buildings fail at least one standard they enforce. “The Pentagon is a very wide building. It has been a very wide building since 1943,” Teller said. “Whether it can become a narrow, tall building in 180 days is a question that requires further study, and we have applied for the funding.”
The directorate noted that, under the Army’s current rules, no separation actions for failing the ratio will occur during an initial 180-day assessment period, and said it had no plans to separate from the building, “at this time.”
As a point of comparison, the directorate also measured the Washington Monument, which has a waist of about 220 feet and a height of 555 feet, for a ratio of 0.396. Officials said the monument passed comfortably and has been invited to stand in the front row at the Secretary’s address.