An official revision to Air Force uniform policy announced Friday allows some airmen to wear uniforms with visible “DIRT,” others to show their “AGE” and some to literally be on “FIRE.”
Duty identifier patches are back.
“I’ve decided to bring duty identifier patches back because the Air Force is made up of many different specialties, each with a unique role in our mission to generate airpower,” said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach. “We are a unified force working together to win.”
The duty patches were popular with airmen but were banned last January in an update of the service’s dress and appearance rules. Worn on the left shoulder of the service’s Operational Camouflage Pattern uniform, or OCPs, the patches identified a wearer’s job with a brown-lettered occupational code.
Then-Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin released a video explaining the demise of the patches early last year.
“As we identify ourselves as one type of airman or another, with one specialty or one skillset or another, we really diminish ourselves,” Allvin said. “Our real value is an integral part of a winning, warfighting team.”
Top Stories This Week
Airmen from across the force took to social media to complain about the change, particularly on the Facebook page of then-Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David Flosi, the role that is generally credited with leading (and occasionally blamed for) uniform changes within the force.
Friday’s reversal was announced by current CMSAF David Wolfe, and later confirmed by Air Force officials in an updated version of the service’s uniform regulation, DAFI 36-2903, Dress and Personnel Appearance of Department of the Air Force Personnel.
Space Force instituted similar job tags, called mission tabs, late last year.
From ‘ABM’ to ‘WX’
The patches, airmen say, provide a sense of pride and community at work. Many of the roughly 100 patches (down slightly from the 134 cited by Allvin) are for specific jobs, which the service refers to as Air Force Specialty Codes, or AFSCs. “AGE” patches are worn by Aerospace Ground Equipment technicians, while “ABM” denotes Air Battle Managers, and “WX” are weather troops.
Other patches cover a wide range of jobs, like “AVI,” which rolls together the five different AFSCs that work on aircraft avionics systems.
Some patches speak for themselves or use long-time nicknames for jobs, like “AMMO” for munitions troops, “FIRE” for firefighters, “NAV” for Navigators, “PJ” for pararescue, and perhaps the most descriptive of all:
“DIRT” for Pavements and Construction Equipment airmen.
Others are a bit arcane: the “HC” worn by Chaplains reflects an administrative code for that role commonly used in paperwork, while a wide range of aviation jobs, from helicopter crews to airborne linguistics to drone operators, wear “CEA,” for Career Enlisted Aviator, according to an Air Force official.
Ironically, one well-known Air Force career does not get its own patch in the new rules: pilots.
Eight new uniform rules
Along with the return of duty patches, the Air Force also announced the approval of a dozen specialized tabs and six other minor changes, specifically:
- Tabs for Arctic, honor guards, special ops and others. The new rules expand the number of authorized tabs for specific jobs and duties, covering recruiters, Security Forces Raven teams, SERE instructors, honor guards and special warfare callsign identifiers.
- No OCPs for officers. Officers will no longer have to maintain a full set of OCPs if their daily job does not commonly wear them, as is the case with many pilots.
- No earbuds at work, but OK for the gym. No earbud-style headphones or any other electronic devices can be used while in uniform, indoors or outside, but “exceptions include […] during travel on public transportation and while wearing the physical fitness gear during individual or personal PT.”
- Bags and Eyewear. New rules and specific allowed colors for both.
- Winter hats. On cold days, black or “coyote” brown watchcaps can now be worn between October 1 and March 31.
- Boot height. The new regulations also confirm that combat boots with OCPs must be between 6 and 12 inches tall, a change from a widely-panned minimum of 8 inches released last year.
