ARLINGTON, Va. — The Air Force is starting work on a lightweight version of its Airman Battle Uniform that will be more comfortable to wear under the merciless sun of the Middle East.

Three different fabrics will get wear-tested, each with the same color and pattern used in the current ABU, said Lt. Col. Gary Salmans, the Air Force’s program manager for uniforms.

The ABU’s current fabric, which is a permanent-press blend of half nylon and half cotton, was supposed to eliminate the need for both winter and summer weight uniforms.

But in e-mails to Stars and Stripes, airmen who have been issued the latest uniform to wear while deployed to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan are reporting that it is much too heavy for the environment.

“Being in a deployed location where the temperature is in the 100s (degrees) daily, these uniforms are very uncomfortable,” wrote Staff Sgt. Cornelius White from his undisclosed base in the U.S. Central Command.

From “somewhere in Iraq,” Security Forces Staff Sgt. Walter Weber agreed.

“[The ABU is] a great uniform to wear in a home station, air-conditioned office,” but not outdoors, in the Middle East, in combat, he said. “It doesn’t breathe or let air circulate anywhere near as well (as the summer battle dress uniforms). That’s not good, considering it’s starting to heat up here.”

The ABU won’t be mandatory wear for the entire Air Force until November 2011. It remains to be seen whether there will be a lightweight version of that uniform available by that date, said Maj. Brad Head, branch chief of the Air Force Uniform and Recognition Branch.

Head said the Air Force decided to offer the ABU in 236 different sizes, to provide the best-possible fit for the largest range of airmen. If the service takes the same sizing approach with a summer-weight version, that range will double to 472 uniforms.

Finding a manufacturer willing to offer such a huge range of uniforms at a reasonable cost to taxpayers could be a challenge, Head said.

Meanwhile, Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores would be faced with keeping all those sizes inventoried and in stock.

Two options include cutting down the number of sizes and offering both a summer and winter-weight ABU; or eliminating the heavier fabric altogether, and making ABUs only out of lightweight material, Head said.

“You can always put on more clothes [to get warm], but you can only get so naked,” Head said.

A third possibility is to make the lightweight uniform a “tracked, issued item,” specifically for airmen deployed to the desert, Head said.

For Air Force spouse Kristin Jane Rawlette, the ABU’s weight isn’t an issue. Keeping it clean is.

Rawlette’s husband is an aircraft maintainer on Aviano Air Base, Italy, where he spends much of his day on the flight line. In December, Rawlette’s husband asked a friend to send him the new ABUs from a stateside base.

Ever since then, his wife said, she has had fits trying to keep her husband looking decent when he sets off to work in the morning.

Rawlette said she has rubbed. She has scrubbed. She has pre-treated, hand-washed and machine-soaked.

And despite her efforts, after just three months the ABUs “look completely gross and extremely worn and old,” she lamented to Stripes in an e-mail.

Salmans, maintenance officer before assuming his current post, said he empathizes with the maintainer groups.

Of all working groups, “they are the hardest on uniforms,” he said.