 Welcome. Today I'm here with the Chief of Naval Personnel, Vice Admiral Bill Moran, to talk about the Navy's big changes to the physical fitness assessment policy. Sir, thank you for joining me. Thanks, MC1. Good to be back with you. Back with you finally to address PFA. We've been talking about this for two years and I think we've finally got a policy that's going to make some changes to the PFA program that sailors are anxious to hear about, so I'm glad to be here. Well, sir, as sailors read this nav admin, I think there's going to be a lot of questions about why. So what should sailors take away from this? Well, I hope sailors take away from this is that as opposed to a system that was punitive in nature, i.e. you pass or you fail and you get so many failures and then we process you out, we don't really talk about better health. This program is designed to talk and incentivize about better health for sailors and not be a test on a pass-fail basis. We're still going to have standards. We're still going to have a way to measure better health and a continuing way to measure mission readiness through the PRT, but overall it's about better health, overall health for our sailors. Now this nav admin and the changes that brings a number of specific changes to the BCA, what are the major differences now? Yeah, the major differences are we've adjusted our current BCA standards to have a little bit more latitude in age differential. We all know that as you age, things fall in different places so we're accounting for that. We're also accounting for what we believe are different body types that have evolved over time as the navies become more a culture of weightlifting and other activity that does change the basic structure of bodies in the navy. We've got more women in the navy than we ever had before so we've done a lot of work and discussion with women to make sure we understand that piece. And we also know that we don't allow a lot of sailors today to take the PRT to be able to demonstrate their physical fitness if they can't pass the BCA. So the adjustments are to allow more sailors to take the PRT so that we can see what kind of shape they're in and when they're not help them get back in a better state of health. Now this nav admin also mentions CO spot checks. What is the role of the commanding officer in this policy and in the navy's culture of fitness? So everything we've done in the past year and a half or so has been focused on putting more authority and empowerment back to the triad including COs of course. And the PRT program has really been administered as a punitive measure of pass or fail and it's not really thought of as how am I going to take care of shipmates in the fleet, how am I going to take care of my sailors to incentivize them with better health. So the program will encourage COs to use spot checks as a means to address a sailor that looks like they may be getting on the wrong side of being healthy, maybe overweight, maybe doesn't look right, not getting enough sleep but being able to address it in those terms. So that's what the spot checks for. It's not a punitive measure, it should never be taken that way. It's more of a way to say hey shipmate, I'm worried about you, let's go do a test if it shows that we need to get you on a program to better health and we're going to do that. Well sir, if I cherry pick a few of the things that I think will jump out for sailors, one is that in 2016 the number of failures that you can have before separation starts were reduced from three and four years to two and three years. What can you tell sailors about the reason behind that change? Well the reason behind it is we think that a lot of sailors get lost in the three and four year policy we have today in between tours because that's a long period of time. And with the added measures to get more sailors to take the PRT, we're going to have a better indication of their health and therefore I see no need to have three failures as a standard in the future but actually two so that we can get sailors mission ready and keep them there longer and not have these periods of time where they go between tours and perhaps get lost and as a result their health we're not paying close enough attention to their health. I want them taken PRTs, I want them tested, I want them physically active and that's going to improve our overall health at the end of the day. Another change in this nav admin is sailors going into 2016 with two or more failures are going to have that number reset back to one and even sailors being separated currently can have that process stopped and go into the 2016 with one failure. What can you tell us about that decision? Yeah the decision is simply we want to be able to have a transition period so sailors fully understand what's happening with the change in the program. We're at the beginning of the fall cycle for 2015 we're going to run that out and give sailors that are either currently being processed for admin set because of the three and four years a chance to correct that and we will reset their failure back to one if they can pass the PFA under the new guidance by the end of December this year and that goes for any sailor that in the fall cycle that is starting right now if they fail and subsequently pass will reset any failures to one and then everything starts fresh from there on January 1st of 2016. That gives everybody a grace period to get on board. Well sir where do you see the PFA and the Navy's physical fitness program going from here what's the future of that and the Navy's cultural fitness? You know I think the partnership with medical is really important here we can't truly assess physical health unless we're doing the kind of measures that account for diabetes blood pressure overweight anything that a standard medical practice would say hey we are concerned about your health and that's that's whether we have to do that in the future through a PFA program like we have today or a more constant attention and and monitoring of people's health through fitness devices which are proliferating out there we think there's an opportunity to do some of that I think that's the way of the future that someday we'll actually we'll actually get rid of the kind of PFA's we do today all together and we'll be monitoring people's health day to day month to month as opposed to every six months. Well sir thank you for coming on the show and talking to us about the Navy's changes to its physical fitness program if you out there have any questions and I know you will you can read the nav admin it's out now or send your questions to us and people at gmail.com