New PT uniform approved - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

New PT uniform approved

No more MC Hammer jokes.

No more swish-swish sounds as you walk.

The new and improved Air Force physical training uniform got the OK from Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and will start arriving in stores as early as September.

Schwartz’s approval came in April, only a month after wear-testing ended.

“What we decided to do was — ‘first things first’ — those things that really matter to current activity,” Schwartz told reporters at a Thursday news conference. “We made some fixes on the PT uniform that will resonate very well with our airmen.”

About 1,000 uniform items — from long pants to short-sleeve shirts — will be in the first shipment heading out to base exchanges, according to Maj. Rosalie Duarte, who coordinates uniform policies at the Air Staff. As production ramps up, the fitness gear will become more widely available.

The upgraded PT uniform will be sold alongside the old design until existing supplies sell out or are distributed to recruits, Duarte said.

Because the new and old PT outfits are nearly identical in appearance, airmen can keep wearing their current PT gear until it wears out.

Still to be determined is how much the new gear will cost, Duarte said. The price will be based on manufacturing and base exchange costs.

For 2009, the price of PT shorts was set at $11.40 and the T-shirt at $6.95. The zipper PT jacket costs $58.75 and the pants are $38.35.

For the most part, the fielded PT uniforms are the same as those wear-tested by 185 airmen in Iraq and at the Pentagon, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, and MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., during February and March. The airmen were asked to wear the clothes at least three times a week and report back on how well they fit and felt and withstood the rigors of exercise and washings.

Results from the wear test produced three changes, Duarte said.

* Airmen found the new gear sizes were bigger compared with the sizes they had been wearing, so the sizes were adjusted.

* Smaller women couldn’t find a size that fit for them, so a new size was introduced — extra-extra small.

* Airmen thought the jacket was puffy in the front, so a trimmer fit was designed.

2 years of redesign

Changes to the PT uniform have been in the works for about two years and are the first major overhaul of the gear since it was widely introduced in 2005.

Development of the current PT uniform started in 2003 as the service prepared to initiate new fitness standards the following year.

By early 2005, the Air Force’s PT uniform was in wide distribution and the complaints began coming in.

The bottom of the pants legs ballooned out, creating what airmen called the “MC Hammer” look.

The nylon fabric was noisy. The sound from pants or short legs rubbing together was loud enough you didn’t need to tell someone you were walking behind them.

The jacket and pants had too much fabric and mesh lining.

Depending on whom you asked, the shorts inseam was too long or too short.

And then there were the cries demanding to know why the T-shirt couldn’t match the wicking of exercise shirts for sale in sporting goods stores.

The Air Force believes it has solved all those problems with the new PT gear, Duarte said.

To solve the balloon pants effect, pants legs were tailored to have a wider bottom leg opening and less fabric, Duarte said. The result is a smoother flow of fabric from waistline to feet.

The jacket also lost some its bulk, Duarte said. The redesigned jacket has a smaller and lighter mesh liner. The amount of nylon fabric was reduced by removing a ventilation flap on the back, doing away with the hood stored inside the collar and trimming fabric from the chest.

To quiet the swooshing, the Air Force introduced a finer, softer nylon fabric used in commercial running suits. The nylon is also more breathable, letting sweat and moisture evaporate through the fabric.

In response to complaints about the shorts inseam, the Air Force is introducing two lengths.

Running shorts, with short inseams, should be available in August. That should quiet the long-distance runners who complained about chafing.

The new shorts have a longer inseam, shutting up those more modest airmen. The length of inseams depends on the short size, but often the new shorts reach to nearly the top of knees.

A new pocket is another feature of the upgraded shorts. The old pockets flopped too much inside the shorts. The new pocket, called a “sport pocket,” is attached to the nylon fabric and still has room for identification cards and keys.

For the T-shirt, an improved wicking fabric was specified. Otherwise, the new and old shirts are identical with matching reflective Air Force logos.

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