The Space Force has authorized Guardians in certain jobs to wear “mission tabs” on their uniforms as part of its new dress and appearance policy, which was released earlier this month.
The move marks a split from rules used by the Air Force, which recently stopped allowing airmen to wear similar tabs, which it calls duty identifier patches.
“Each military service establishes grooming and dress standards based on its mission and the philosophy behind how it chooses to present itself,” said Ann Stefanek, a spokesperson for the Department of the Air Force. “The Space Force has tailored its uniforms and appearance standards to reflect its unique mission and operational demands. These standards are designed to ensure a professional military appearance while providing functionality for Guardians operating across a range of mission environments.”
The new policy consolidates previous grooming and uniform standards for Guardians and includes updates from the last Space Force Uniform Board, Stefanek said.
Top Stories This Week
One key difference is the Space Force tabs for Guardians refer to specific missions that encompass more than one specialty. The Air Force patches eliminated in January identified airmen by their specific career fields.
Air & Space Forces magazine first reported that the Space Force had authorized 11 mission tabs under the Aug. 14 instruction.
The tabs are authorized for Guardians in the following mission areas: orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare, cyberspace warfare, satellite communications, navigation warfare, missile warning and tracking, space-based sensing and targeting, theater electromagnetic warfare, satellite control, space lift, and range control, the policy says.
Guardians can wear the tabs on the right sleeves of their uniforms above the organizational unit patch and below the Commander’s Badge Insignia, the policy says. The tabs must be made of PVC, remain in the Velcro boundary, and must use the service’s “Space Blue” color on an Operational Camouflage Pattern background.
The Space Force is the smallest military branch with about 9,800 Guardians. By comparison, the Air Force has an end strength of 320,000 airmen.
The Air Force previously allowed airmen to wear tabs that identified their specific job, which the service calls a Air Force Specialty Code, or AFSC. But Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin announced in January that duty identifier patches were no longer authorized, prompting some Reddit users to voice their consternation.
“Over the years, we’ve continued to increase the number of approved tabs to where we now have over 134 approved tabs,” Allvin said in a Jan. 29 video.
Allvin then pointed to a visual demonstration of several duty identifier patches and said, “This is a lot of tabs.”
Not only does having so many patches make it difficult to comply with and enforce standards, but it also undermines unity among the ranks, Allvin said.
“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. While that is a contribution that we make, our real value is our integral part of a winning warfighting team. And that’s what we want to emphasize. We want to emphasize the team over the individual.”
