AFT Alternate Events

The AFT alternate events are four cardio assessments that replace the 2-mile run for soldiers on a permanent medical profile: a 2.5-mile walk, a 12,000-metre bike, a 1,000-metre swim and a 5,000-metre row. Each is graded go or no-go against a time standard for your age and sex.

Use the tool above to work out which events you take, which alternate applies, and what you have to score. Two rules decide most of it, and both are misreported elsewhere.

Taking the AFT with a profile

Whether you can take an alternate event at all comes down to one question, and it is not how much it hurts to run.

A temporary profile does not qualify. There is no workaround, no exception and no commander discretion. You rehabilitate, recondition, come off the profile, and then take the standard five-event test including the 2-mile run.

A permanent profile does qualify. You take every event your profile does not prohibit, and if the run is prohibited you take one alternate aerobic event and must get a go on it.

That is the whole gate. Pain without a profile changes nothing about your test.

How a temporary profile becomes permanent

A temporary profile is capped at 90 days per condition. Pregnancy and tuberculosis are the exceptions. Extensions are possible, but the Army holds a hard 365-day ceiling.

At that point you have reached the Medical Retention Determination Point, and any limitation still standing converts to a permanent profile. That conversion is what makes a modified AFT possible. Soldiers who cannot perform any aerobic event carry a permanent 3 in the relevant PULHES designator and go to a Medical Evaluation Board instead.

What an AFT permanent profile actually changes

Your DA Form 3349 lists what you are cleared for and what is prohibited. Your profiling provider writes it through e-Profile in the Medical Readiness Portal. You do not pick your alternate event, and you do not negotiate it with a grader on test day. It is a clinical call.

Two numbers get confused constantly, so take them one at a time.

Sixty points is the test standard. A go on your alternate event satisfies the aerobic requirement. It is not scored on the 0 to 100 scale, so there is no way to earn 100 on a row the way you could on a run.

Seventy points is a promotion credit, and only that. Army Directive 2025-06 gives combat specialty soldiers a flat 70 points for a go on the alternate event and for every event their profile prohibits, for semi-centralized promotion board averaging. It does not change whether you passed.

Do I need to average 70 points?

Only if you are in a combat specialty. The directive says soldiers serving in combat specialties must pass all events not prohibited by a permanent profile with an average of 70 points or higher. Four events means 280, three means 210, two means 140, one means 70.

For everyone else the directive publishes no equivalent average, so a page telling a general standard soldier they need to average 70 has invented a harder rule than the one that exists. Check yours with your S1 rather than a calculator that does not ask which standard you are on.

The four alternate cardio events

All four are go or no-go. You complete the distance inside the time for your age group and sex, or you do not.

5,000-metre row. A rower with adjustable resistance and an odometer. You may pause or rest at any pace, but you cannot dismount mid-event, and you complete the full distance.

12,000-metre bike. Adjustable seat and handlebars, odometer required. Resting is allowed, dismounting is not.

1,000-metre swim. Any stroke or combination. No diving start, so you begin touching the wall. Walking the bottom to recover is authorised. Minimum pool depth is one metre.

2.5-mile walk. One foot stays in contact with the ground at all times. A running stride, or both feet leaving the ground, ends the event as a no-go.

Row and bike start ten minutes after your last completed event. Swimmers have to reach the pool inside the test’s overall 120-minute window. Soldiers on a permanent profile test in the fourth lane position for every event.

The body fat rule changed in your favour

Under the old policy a soldier who tested with an alternate event was locked out of the 465-point body composition exemption, because that exemption required all five primary events. Profile soldiers carried a real disadvantage.

That is over. Army Directive 2026-13 rescinded the exemption entirely on 7 July 2026. Nobody gets it now, so nobody is excluded from it either. Every soldier meets the same waist-to-height standard regardless of how they tested.

Several pages still carry the old exclusion as current. If you read that you were shut out of something, check the date on the page.

Pregnancy and postpartum run on a separate track

This is not the DA Form 3349 system and the two do not interact. Three timelines run from the end of pregnancy, including perinatal loss, and they do not line up with each other.

Unit and diagnostic PT through the P3T programme resumes at 180 days. The record AFT exemption runs to 365 days. The body composition exemption also runs to 365 days.

So a soldier can be back at unit PT and still inside her record test exemption. You may volunteer to test early without giving up the rest of the window.

Questions soldiers ask

Can I take an alternate event on a temporary profile?

No. Temporary profiles are not authorised for a modified AFT under any circumstance. You recover and take the standard test.

Can I choose which alternate event I take?

No. Your profiling provider records it on your DA Form 3349 based on what you can safely do.

How many points is a go worth?

It satisfies the aerobic requirement at the 60-point level. Combat specialty soldiers also receive a 70-point credit, but only for promotion board averaging.

Can I score 100 on the row or bike?

No. Alternate events are graded go or no-go with no scaled scoring.

What if I cannot perform any aerobic event?

Your profile will carry a permanent 3 in the relevant PULHES designator and you will be referred to a Medical Evaluation Board under the Disability Evaluation System.