On July 15, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military will screen every service member aged 30 and older for testosterone deficiency annually as part of routine health assessments, with testosterone replacement therapy offered when a medical professional recommends it. Troops under 30 can opt in voluntarily.
Hegseth framed the program in a video in the register he has made the Pentagon's house style: “It's about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.” Military Times headlined its coverage “Forged by the T.”
The medical footprint is narrower than the rollout suggests. Roughly 5.6 percent of men between 30 and 79 have testosterone deficiency, which can cause fatigue, muscle loss, weight gain, and sexual dysfunction; routine population-wide hormone screening of healthy adults is not standard preventive practice. The Pentagon declined to answer Military Times' question about whether female service members would receive hormone screenings or access to therapy on the same terms.
The program lands from the same secretary who tightened shaving rules he framed as combat readiness and ordered generals to meet fitness standards on camera. Screening a two-million-person force for a condition affecting about one in twenty, while the department cuts actual-care programs elsewhere, reads less like preventive medicine than like ideology delivered through the military health system (see The Navy Will Move to Discharge Sailors Whose Shaving Condition Does Not Clear in a Year, a Disorder Affecting an Estimated 60 Percent of Black Men).
The written guidance lasted a day. On September 2, 2026, the Pentagon posted a document titled “Clinical Guidance for Health and Human Performance Optimization” setting out how the screening would work: men aged 30 and older answer a questionnaire that can trigger a blood test for testosterone levels and, if indicated, hormone therapy. Women would answer a questionnaire that could lead to treatment for conditions related to hormonal imbalance, with testosterone used only for diagnoses where there is evidence of efficacy, such as Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.
By September 3 the document and an accompanying statement from spokesman Sean Parnell had been taken off the website. An official said the draft “has been temporarily rescinded to allow for updates,” and that interim guidance remains in effect. The policy itself was not withdrawn.
Medical objection preceded the reversal. The Endocrine Society said in July that there is “insufficient evidence to support a general recommendation to perform population-level screening for hypogonadism in asymptomatic men” through blood testing.
Update (September 19, 2026): the Pentagon is moving ahead with the screening, now narrowed to most male troops, and the clinical guidance accompanying it undercuts the rationale. The guidance states that “Evidence does not support its use to improve energy, vitality, physical function, or cognition.” It also concedes that the symptoms attributed to low testosterone overlap with those of mild traumatic brain injury, which is notable in a force with more than 820 wounded in the current war.
Update (October 17, 2026): Defense Health Agency guidance says troops in aeromedical, dive, submarine and nuclear fields may be disqualified from those roles if diagnosed with testosterone deficiency, Federal News Network and MS NOW reported. MS NOW reported that deployed troops on therapy must show a level of 300 to 600 nanograms per deciliter at a follow-up, and that the Pentagon has not said what happens to troops who decline treatment. Retired Army Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis said, “You don't treat the labs, you treat the patient.” The Pentagon did not comment.