The United States Air Force have various standardized military uniforms worn by airmen. This helps them to distinguish themselves from the other services. Here are some of the uniforms worn by airmen.

• Service dress

Although it was initially adopted in 1994, the current U.S. Air Force Service Dress Uniform consists of a three-button coat with silver-colored buttons featuring a design known as “Hap Arnold wings”, matching trousers, and either a service cap or flight cap, all in Shade 1620, also known as “Air Force Blue”.

Enlisted airmen are required to wear cloth rank insignia on both sleeves of the jacket and shirt. Officers, on the other hand, can only wear metal rank insignia pinned onto the epaulets of the coat, and Air Force Blue slide-on loops on the epaulets of the shirt. Officers also wear a band of dark blue cloth sleeve braid loops 3 inches from the cuffs of the sleeves of the coat.

• Mess dress

The Mess dress uniform is worn by airmen to formal or semi-formal occasions such as Dinings-in, Dinings-out, the annual Air Force Ball, weddings, and other formal functions.

The current mess dress uniform in use since the early/mid-1980s consists of a dark blue mess jacket and mess dress trousers for males and a similar color evening-length skirt for females. As of August 2020, females have the option to wear mess dress trousers. The jacket features ornate silver buttons and is worn with the service member’s awarded medals in miniature size, wings in miniature size, or other specialty insignia over the left breast, command insignia over the right breast for colonels and below, satin air force blue bowtie for males or tab for females, and a satin air force blue cummerbund.

• Combat uniforms

Pilots, navigators/combat systems officers, aircrews, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) crews, and missile crews continue to wear olive green or desert tan one-piece flight suits, or the two-piece OCP pattern flight suit. The one-piece flight suits are required for any aircrew position in which ejection seats are used. Aircrew not in an ejection seat and ground-based crews, like RPA and missile crews, may wear either the two- or one-piece flight suits.

Check out the rest of our blog posts here.