Editorial Policy

Sources before invention

Every formula, table and program rule on this site traces to a published source, ranked by authority. First rank: the governing texts themselves — for the current standard, Army Directive 2026-13 and its implementing guidance, HQDA EXORD 182-26 (Annex A for measurement procedures); for the historical record, AR 600-9, Army Directive 2023-11 and Army Directive 2023-08, and DoDI 1308.03. Second rank: official Army and DoD publishers, including the Army.mil news service and the Army Resilience Directorate's ABCP pages. Third rank, used only to corroborate: established reporting (FEDweek, AUSA) that reproduces or reports the primary documents.

Two rules follow from that hierarchy. No constant and no table value is ever reconstructed from memory — if a figure cannot be verified against a source, it does not appear. And no claim about the program is taken from another calculator site: secondary calculators are treated as untrustworthy until their numbers match the primary sources, which is how several of them were caught still running retired methods — in 2023, and again in 2026.

How numbers are verified

Verification is mechanical, not impressionistic. The WHtR calculators were checked against the official maximum-waist screening table (Figure B-1 of the EXORD's Annex A) at every published height, and against the guidance's own recording example: a computed ratio of 0.549888 must record as 0.549 and meet the standard, and here it does. The boundary cases are tested explicitly — at 70 in, a 38.5 in waist records exactly 0.550 and fails, while 38 in records 0.542 and passes. The retired calculators keep their original verification: the one-site equations against Army Directive 2023-11's published samples (17% and 26%), the multi-site equations against published worked examples, and the screening tables transcribed from Table B-1 and cross-checked cell by cell against a second independent reproduction. Every worked example printed on this site is generated by the same calculation engine the calculators use, and an automated check re-runs them on every rebuild, so an example can never silently drift from the calculator it illustrates.

Each content page carries a visible 'Last verified' date: the date its claims were last checked against the sources above. Verification is a dated act, not a vibe.

Tracking the 180-day review

The current standard is explicitly provisional in one respect: HQDA's 180-day assessment of WHtR runs until around late December 2026, and the follow-on guidance may adjust the standard, the procedures, or the treatment of open ABCP cases. This site treats that as a tracked event, not background noise. The official sources listed above are re-checked for the assessment's outcome; when guidance publishes, the affected pages are re-verified and updated, their 'Last verified' dates move, and any change to a number a reader may have relied on is stated plainly on the page rather than smoothed over. Until then, pages that touch the assessment describe it as running — because it is.

Corrections

Errors are corrected at the level they occurred: a wrong constant is fixed in the engine, a wrong table value in the data, a wrong claim in the text — and the fix is re-verified against the source before the page is republished. Errors can be reported through the error report form, which asks for the four details that make a report actionable. Where a correction changes a result a reader may have relied on, that is stated plainly rather than smoothed over.

Independence

This site has no affiliation with the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense, receives no direction from them, and does not accept payment to change a number, a table, or an opinion. Its only interest in the figures it publishes is that they match the sources. Where Army policy is genuinely unsettled or in transition — as WHtR is during its 180-day assessment — the site says so on the relevant pages rather than presenting a provisional position as settled fact.

Review

Pages are reviewed whenever a governing source changes: a new Army directive or EXORD on body composition, the outcome of the 180-day WHtR assessment, a new edition of AR 600-9, or a reissue of DoDI 1308.03 each triggers a full re-verification of the affected pages. The homepage carries the substance of the current position; this policy is the standing commitment behind it.

Last reviewed: 26 October 2026