The Defence Aptitude Assessment (DAA): Eight Clocks, Six Results and No Pass Mark
The DAA set by the RAF, Royal Navy and Royal Marines: 128 questions in eight timed parts, what each section tests, and how your results decide your role.
If you have applied to the RAF, the Royal Navy or the Royal Marines, the first thing you sit after the application form is the Defence Aptitude Assessment. It is one test for almost every role in the three services, and it works differently from most aptitude tests in one important way: it does not tell you whether you passed. It tells your careers adviser which roles you can apply for.
What the DAA replaced, and why the old names still matter
The RAF still calls it "the DAA (previously called the Airmen Selection Test)". The old AST had the same eight timed parts plus two memory parts, which were dropped. The Naval Service used a different test, the Naval Service Recruiting Test (NSRT), until the DAA arrived in 2022. So if a friend, a forum or an older guide talks about the AST, the Airman Selection Test or the Royal Navy Recruiting Test, they are describing the predecessors of the test you will sit. The British Army is not part of this: it runs its own Army aptitude test.
The eight parts, in order
The official familiarisation test, which the RAF and the Royal Navy both host, states the real length of every part. The format has not changed since at least 2020.
Divide each clock by its questions and the most useful fact about the DAA appears: the pace is completely different from part to part.
A candidate who carries one pace through the whole sitting is wrong on most of it: too slow on Work Rate, too rushed on Verbal Reasoning.
What each section actually asks
Verbal Reasoning is not a reading test
Despite the name, there are no True, False or Cannot Say passages. Each scenario is a small puzzle: match five things against a buyer's requirements, work out who prefers what from partial rankings, apply a table of rules with special conditions, or deduce who lives where. "Cannot tell" is a live option on the preference and who-is-where scenarios. The skill is careful information processing, and paper is your working memory.
Numerical Reasoning is two different tests
Part 1 is bare arithmetic at 20 seconds a question with no calculator: adding fractions with different bottoms, converting fractions to decimals, solving a one-step equation. Part 2 is graphs and tables at 44 seconds a question: reading a multi-line graph, spotting the series that rose every month, working a speed, distance and time problem, finding the one wrong figure in a column. They are reported as one result, but they reward different preparation.
Work Rate is the one nobody has seen before
Each question shows a grid of three rows and four columns, letters or words, numbers or signs, and pictures, with a code of three symbols from three different columns. You pick the one option that swaps each code symbol for another symbol from the same column, in the code's order. The code does not have to run left to right across the grid, and that is where most marks go. Twelve seconds a question.
Spatial Reasoning is flat, then solid
Part 1 gives you three or four flat shapes with sides labelled x, y and z, and asks what they make when the matching sides are joined. Pieces can turn but never flip, and the options are solid outlines with no join lines. Part 2 shows two objects with a dot on a corner of each and asks which turned pair still has both dots on the same corners; one wrong dot makes the whole option wrong.
Electrical and Mechanical Comprehension mix knowledge with reasoning
About half the questions are drawings: circuits with switches and bulbs, gear trains, pulleys, levers. The rest are plain knowledge: units, conductors and insulators, what a fuse does, which tool tightens a nut, what a drawing scale of 1:5 means. The knowledge questions are the cheapest marks in the sitting, because a short revision list covers them.
How the DAA is scored
The familiarisation's own scorer counts correct answers per part and adds nothing for a wrong one, and the official advice is to answer as many questions as you can in the time allowed. Nothing published mentions a deduction, so a blank can only cost you. Results come back as six sections: Numerical parts 1 and 2 are one result and Spatial parts 1 and 2 are another. One candidate report describes an overall threshold on top of the section ones; the MOD does not publish one, so treat that as a reason to avoid one very weak section.
Where and how you sit it
The link arrives in your candidate portal and stays valid for 14 days. You can sit it at home on your own laptop, desktop or tablet with a screen of at least 10.2 inches, or at an Armed Forces Careers Office on a service device. It must be finished in one sitting once started, and the Royal Navy suggests allowing about 90 minutes. Practising on a phone is fine; the real test cannot be taken on one.
How to prepare in the fortnight you have
Most candidates have the 14-day window and little else. Short, repeated section drills beat one long sitting: make part 1 arithmetic automatic, learn the Work Rate method until twelve seconds feels normal, revise the electrical and mechanical knowledge list, then sit one full run a week before the real one to rehearse the eight changes of pace. Our Defence Aptitude Assessment practice tests run every section at the official counts and clocks, with Back, Next and a summary screen, and the Work Rate drill is free.