Pete Hegseth’s plan for a testosterone-fuelled “High-T” military has hit an unexpected snag.

The Pentagon published detailed rules for the program on Wednesday (2 September), then quietly pulled them from its website less than a day later.

The Defence Department said the clinical guidance was “temporarily rescinded to allow for updates,” according to a US official who spoke to Reuters. Interim guidance reportedly remains in effect, but the Pentagon has not explained what needed to be changed or why the document was published before those changes were made.

Hegseth’s underlying order, meanwhile, has not been withdrawn.

The defence secretary announced the initiative in July under the title “The High-T Department of War”, ordering active-duty and reserve service members aged 30 and older to undergo screening for testosterone deficiencies and other hormonal conditions. Hegseth presented testosterone as a potential tool for improving strength, longevity and military readiness.

The now-vanished guidance offered the first detailed picture of how that would actually work.

As reported by Reuters, men aged 30 and older would receive mandatory testosterone blood tests, while younger men could request testing or be tested when clinicians identified possible symptoms of deficiency.

Women would be handled differently. They would not routinely receive testosterone blood tests. Instead, military clinicians would screen them for symptoms including fatigue and menstrual disruption, as well as relative energy deficiency in sport, which is a condition associated with inadequate energy intake relative to physical activity that can affect bones, hormones and physical performance.

The guidance also told clinicians to assess service members aged 35 and older for perimenopause and menopause symptoms when they affected quality of life or military duties.

Testosterone treatment for women would be considered only in a very narrow circumstance involving postmenopausal women, and the treatment would be off-label and closely monitored.

Importantly, the guidance itself acknowledged that the evidence does not show testosterone treatment improves women’s psychological well-being, cognition, cardiovascular health, bone density or muscle performance.

Dr Demetre Daskalakis, chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and a former senior CDC official, has previously warned that while testosterone treatment can be beneficial for people with clinically diagnosed deficiency, routine screening of asymptomatic people is not generally recommended by endocrine experts.

Testosterone is also not harmless. Excessive levels can increase red blood cell counts and clotting risk, suppress fertility, and affect mood, sleep and blood pressure.

So while the Pentagon figures out what exactly went wrong with its new clinical guidance, the underlying “High-T” program remains in place.

And that has produced another awkward problem for the Trump administration: its approach to testosterone and hormone therapy looks very different depending on who is receiving it.

The Pentagon is promoting hormone screening and potentially testosterone treatment for service members it presumes to be cisgender as a way to improve military readiness.

At the same time, the Trump administration is fighting to remove transgender people from the military and restrict their access to gender-affirming hormone care, arguing in part that the ongoing medical treatment associated with being transgender creates an unacceptable burden.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal put the contradiction rather bluntly during a congressional hearing when Hegseth announced the initiative: “This, by the way, is gender affirming care.”