Senior Master Sgt. Dana Athnos, Air Force uniform board superintendent, shows the unpopular interior pocket of the Airman Battle Uniform, left, which adds two hot extra layers of material. (Lisa Burgess / S&S)
ARLINGTON, Va. — Enlisted airmen will be getting an extra pair of better-fitting shorts and an extra T-shirt in their annual clothing allowance, thanks to feedback from deployed Air Force members who are wearing their official workout gear for more than just gym time.
The annual enlisted “clothing bag” issue will go from three sets of shorts and T-shirts to four in fiscal 2008.
The reason for the increased issue is that when airmen are on combat rotations, “you’re either in your [combat uniform], flight suits or your fitness gear — you don’t wear civilian clothes,” Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, deputy chief of staff, Manpower and Personnel, told reporters during a roundtable Wednesday.
“Well, when you’re wearing this stuff every day, and sending them to a commercial laundry, they get beat up pretty badly,” said Brady, who just returned from a trip to the Middle East to visit airmen. “So we probably need to make a little more available to you.”
Not only going to be more plentiful, they will fit better beginning this fall, according to Senior Master Sgt. Dana Athnos, Air Force uniform board superintendent.
Shorts cut according to a new pattern will start hitting the Air Force’s inventory in October, where they will gradually replace existing gear as the stock of old shorts are exhausted, Athnos told Stripes on Thursday.
The shorts pattern has been modified so that the inside liner fits better, “and they’re not so blousy,” Athnos said.
In addition to better-fitting shorts, starting this November, airmen will have two optional pieces of fitness gear to spend their own money on, Athnos said: a gray, long-sleeve T-shirt and a gray sweatshirt, both of which will be sold through the Army and Air Force Exchange Service.
Deployed airmen are also helping to iron out some of the early design bugs in the airman’s battle uniform — for instance, the interior pockets in the top.
These are “OK if you want to carry some stuff,” Brady said. But when the pockets are empty, there are three layers of material in the top, making the uniform blouse hotter.
Feedback from deployed airmen indicated that the pockets are “not something people want or need,” he said.
The pockets “seemed like a good idea at the time, it turns out it wasn’t,” Brady said. “We’ll get rid of it.”
For airmen who already have been issued the uniform and don’t like the pockets, Brady recommended they do to the interior pocket what Athnos has done to hers: “cut it out if you don’t like it.”
Stripes reporter Jeff Schogol contributed to this report.
