Armed services tests have existed for centuries. We focus on the US Armed Services and how the tests used have adapted to changed claims associated with changing needs and purposes of the tests. World War I provided the impetus for the first serious military testing program. An all-star group of psychologists convened in Vineland, New Jersey and quickly constructed Army Alpha, which became a model for later group-administered, objective, multiple-choice tests. Military testing was the first program to explicitly move from very specialized tests for specific purposes to testing generalized underlying ability. This made such tests suitable for situations not even considered initially. The practice was both widely followed and just as widely disparaged. The AGCT, AFQT, and ASVAB were later versions of this initial test. Army Alpha also influenced the creation of the SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT tests. Decisions based on military tests, like all tests, can be controversial. In 1965, Project 100,000 lowered the cut score and resulted in thousands of low-scoring men being drafted, many of whom later died fighting in Vietnam.