Recently, the Air Force has announced multiple things that they’re going to be changing about dress and appearance, one of which is the PT uniforms, which is actually the biggest item that they have released so far that they’re going to be changing. Our main requirement from the Air Force leaders was to develop a PT uniform that people really wanted to wear and is as good as, if not better than, the commercially available athletic wear. The approach the Air Force has taken is to develop a uniform that is earmarked for runners or running, and one that is better designed for some of those other athletic activities. This is the first update to the PTG uniform in more than 16 years. The new ensemble currently consists of a jacket, a pair of pants, a t shirt, and two types of shorts. A lined runner shorts and a longer, unlined, multipurpose short. A long sleeve t shirt and hoodie are in development. With the notorious track jacket. We’ve made updates to the fabric to minimize the noise it makes during workouts. The jacket will be sleeker looking, so instead of having a bulky jacket, you’ll have a fit and tailored design.
The new uniform will be available to airmen in 2022, and there will be a four year transition period for mandatory wear. First one is there is an Air Force uniform office that is literally their department’s job is to just focus on Air Force uniforms. I definitely have a feeling that they are not that busy of a department. So there are some people getting paid some really big bucks to do a pretty chill job. This is probably how a typical year goes.
Yo. Should we change something or just let the uniform stuff stay the way it is this year?
Oh, no, we’re good. We only have 200,000 complaints on one uniform item.
Oh, only 200,000 complaints. We need at least 300,000 complaints before we even decide if we want to do something about the uniform issues.
One of the key reasons that they said that they were implementing this new change was because they want to be able to keep up and compete with commercial companies. In their statement, they literally said the notorious track jacket. Now, this jacket that they currently have for Air Force PT is absolutely awful because they knew that everyone hated this jacket. To me, their statement of saying that they want to compete with the commercial companies with creating a product that people actually want to wear, the fact that they have a uniform that does not fit that criteria for 16 years is just mind blowing to me, because you would think, why reinvent the wheel? When they created the current PT uniform 16 years ago, they had seen other commercial companies making fantastic products. Why would you not look at what the market has to offer and try to implement that into the military uniforms. Kind of what I touched on earlier about how many people are in the Air Force uniform office when they came up with this decision, and they’re like, oh, I’m sure they spent so many hours and weeks and months researching all the materials that we’ll need and everything, but realistically, they could have just gone to an Air Force gym, seen what 90% of the people in the gym are wearing and gone, we’re going to go that direction for our PT year because that’s what everyone voluntarily wears.
I know it sounds like I’m ragging on the current Air Force PT uniforms, and I am, because this is what it’s like to put on the current jacket that they use. This actually makes less noise than the jacket that they currently use in the air force. That’s how bad the current jacket is.
When they first came out, I joined in 2011 and we called them trash bags because they would make the same swish noise.
This is less noise than the other jacket makes. So imagine running in that other jacket or working out or doing any activity in that other jacket. It is very annoying and it is not breathable. About as breathable as this trash bag that I’m wearing right now. And not only is the PT jacket not breathable at all and super annoying, but the actual t shirt that you wear during PT is also like this weird plasticky cloth fabric. I think it’s supposed to be a moisture wicking material, but it doesn’t really work that well. And it’s really heavy and unbreathable and just really annoying. Even if I bought new ones, if you used them a few times, it was like the stench never fully washed out of that shirt. I could wash everything else, everything else would be fine. But that shirt, it just always had, like, a nasty smell to it. So I don’t know what material it was made out of, but it was obviously a terrible choice for something that people are going to be sweating in a lot. Another thing I took away from this is they changed these uniforms after 16 years.
Somebody that was a senior Airman 16 years ago could have complained about this. And then when they finally retired, they still didn’t see the change with the PT uniforms. And this is a reason why a lot of people get frustrated with how slow change is in the military. The next thing I want to hit on is they aren’t implementing this until sometime in 2022. As of now, I haven’t seen an official date yet. When they’re going to start having people wear them officially. That’s still over a year away or around a year away if they can implement it in the beginning of 2022, which honestly, I don’t think is going to happen. The fact that they are saying that it’s not going to happen until next year, I find kind of crazy because anytime you want to start up a new company or a clothing company, there are a lot of ways that you can produce a lot of clothing very fast. So I don’t know what end of the whole Air force this is on of why it’s going to take so long to get this stuff produced and issued out to people, especially when they’re saying that the current uniforms aren’t fitting the needs of airmen.
You would think that if it’s something as simple as producing clothing, which is mass produced all over the world, that they could get it out right away. And they are going to allow a four year phasing period, which I think is insanely long for PT uniform because it’s just gym shorts and a t shirt and like a track jacket, right. I don’t think that it’s going to take that long for people to want to wear them. Getting more lightweight t shirts, getting breathable mesh shorts is going to be a huge step up for a lot of people. My guess on the reason why they’re allowing up to the four year phase in period is because they probably have a ridiculous amount of already produced clothing for the current pizza uniforms, and they want to make sure to try to get back as much money as possible because that’s a lot of money to just throw away if nobody ever buys the current ones that they’ve produced. And lastly, overall, I think this is a really good decision on the Air Force. This part I know this video might seem like I was kind of bashing on the Air Force, which I kind of was because I really, really hated our PT uniforms.
So I’m kind of upset that it didn’t happen while I was in because from the moment I joined in 2013, it was like, yo, these suck. But nothing ever changed. And so I’m actually really glad that it’s changing, especially because McKenna is going to get to partake in the new uniforms, which should be much more comfortable. And it’s definitely better late than never that they’re getting onto this update now. They also kind of teased in this article that there’s going to possibly be a PT hoodie released at some point that they are still in the designing phases, which I think is absolutely awesome. I don’t know why having a hoodie like a sweatshirt was not the mandatory PT requirement already. Hoodies are universally worn by almost anyone. Should be absolutely awesome. And I know a lot of people have wanted that for a very long time, so it is very much overdue. I’m surprised that it wasn’t part of the initial rollout, but maybe they’re just taking their time to make sure that they do it right. You haven’t subscribed or click the notification bell. Be sure to do that because we post new videos weekly and we also live stream.
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