You get three lifetime attempts at the ASTB-E, and the newest one replaces everything before it. No other military test we cover punishes a casual retake this hard.
The Aviation Selection Test Battery screens candidates for Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard aviation, and a subset of it screens candidates for Navy Officer Candidate School.
The Six Subtests
The Naval Aerospace Medical Institute publishes the structure. Three subtests make up the Officer Aptitude Rating, and three more complete the full battery.
- Math Skills Test. Part of the OAR, covering arithmetic, algebra and basic geometry.
- Reading Comprehension Test. Part of the OAR.
- Mechanical Comprehension Test. Part of the OAR, covering physical principles, engines, gears and pressure.
- Aviation and Nautical Information Test. Aerodynamics, aircraft components, flight rules and nautical terminology. The Navy notes this is the subtest most easily improved by study.
- Naval Aviation Trait Facet Inventory. A forced-choice personality inventory built from paired statements. The trait list is proprietary and no preparation is needed.
- Performance Based Measures Battery. Psychomotor tasks flown on a stick and throttle, measuring spatial orientation, dichotic listening, tracking and divided attention across those tasks at once.
One caution before you read elsewhere. The Navy's own frequently asked questions page says the battery is made up of seven subtests, while the table on that same page lists six. The institute's overview page also says six. The count of six appears twice against seven once, so six is the safer read. Ask the test administrator if it matters to your planning.
The Four Scores and What Each Does
Five of the six subtests are computer-adaptive, which means you cannot skip a question, return to an earlier one, or change an answer once submitted.
| Score | Scale | What it predicts |
|---|---|---|
| OAR | 20 to 80, in one-point steps | Academic performance at Officer Candidate School |
| AQR | 1 to 9 stanine | Academic performance in aviation preflight indoctrination |
| PFAR | 1 to 9 stanine | Primary flight performance for student naval aviators |
| FOFAR | 1 to 9 stanine | Primary flight performance for student naval flight officers |
Pilot selection reads the AQR together with the PFAR. Flight officer selection reads the AQR together with the FOFAR. The stanine scale is coarse, so a single point covers a wide band. A five holds the middle fifth of candidates. A seven sits roughly between the 77th and 89th percentiles.
The scoring is compensatory, which the Navy states directly. A weak subtest can be offset by a strong one, so one bad section does not automatically sink a composite.
How the Three-Attempt Rule Shapes Your Strategy
After three administrations you are done, permanently. There is no waiver, no appeal, and no separate pool of attempts for a different programme.
The replacement rule sharpens that further. The Navy states that your most recent scores become your scores of record and replace all existing scores. That holds even when some or all of them were higher on a previous attempt.
So a candidate holding a competitive AQR and PFAR who retests hoping to nudge the OAR can walk away with a worse aviation package and one attempt left. This is the exact opposite of how the Air Force AFOQT works, where superscoring keeps your best composite from every sitting. Candidates who research both tests together conflate the two rules constantly, and it is an expensive mistake here.
The waiting period between attempts is 30 full calendar days, and the Navy says plainly that the interval cannot be waived. Retests cover the whole battery, since subtests cannot be carried across sittings.
Where the Marine Corps and Coast Guard Fit
The same battery serves all three sea services. Marine Corps aviation applicants sit the full ASTB-E, and Marine Corps Order 1542.1I sets the requirements rather than the Navy's programme authorizations.
Coast Guard aviation candidates use it too, which surprises people who assume the Coast Guard runs its own selection. The same test serves three services, each with its own thresholds behind it.
The attempt limit follows you across all of them. Three administrations is three in total, so a candidate who exhausts their attempts pursuing Navy aviation cannot start again with the Marine Corps.
The OAR Route Into Navy OCS
Not every candidate needs the full battery. Non-aviation officer programmes, including Navy Officer Candidate School, commonly require the OAR alone, which is the three-subtest version running one to two hours.
That matters for anyone weighing a commission without a flight ambition. The performance based measures battery and the aviation knowledge subtest are the hardest parts to prepare for, and the OAR route skips both.
It also connects to the commissioning routes we cover elsewhere. Our commissioning guide covers how the officer paths compare across the branches.
The Navy Will Not Tell You the Minimum Score
The institute declines to publish minimum scores, stating that requirements differ by programme and service. It points applicants to Navy Personnel Command programme authorizations 106 and 107, to Marine Corps Order 1542.1I, or to a recruiter.
Treat any site quoting a specific ASTB minimum with suspicion, because the source that would know has chosen not to publish one. Numbers circulating online may reflect a real programme authorization at some point in the past, and they may equally be invented.
The Navy does publish the distribution. Most examinees score between 40 and 60 on the OAR, which at least tells you where the middle of the field sits.
What the Performance Based Measures Battery Involves
This is the part of the ASTB-E with no equivalent anywhere else in military testing. You fly tracking tasks on a physical stick and throttle while the system measures how well you hold a target, and it layers other demands on top of that.
Dichotic listening is one of them. Different audio streams play into each ear, and you respond to one while ignoring the other, all while continuing to track. The battery is measuring divided attention as much as manual skill.
Practice helps less here than candidates hope. You cannot rehearse on the actual apparatus, and general video-game skill transfers only loosely. Arriving rested does help, since sustained attention degrades quickly when you are tired, and this section comes at the end of a long sitting.
Who Should Not Book a Date Yet
Anyone with an unprepared aviation and nautical information subtest should wait. It is the section the Navy itself says responds best to study. Going in cold wastes one of only three attempts on material you could have learned in a fortnight.
Candidates uncertain whether they want aviation should also pause. If a non-aviation commission would satisfy you, sitting the OAR alone leaves your full-battery attempts intact for later, and that flexibility is worth more than an early score.
What Would Change This Answer
If the Navy moved to superscoring, retesting would stop being a gamble and the strategy here would invert. If it published programme minimums, candidates could judge their own competitiveness without a recruiter. Neither appears likely, since the institute has held both positions for years.
Our military tests guide covers the other selection tests you may face. Work out whether your target programme needs the OAR or the full battery. Prepare the aviation knowledge subtest first, and book an attempt only once a practice run holds up.