Some serious backpedaling on the RAF MODNET page. Design concepts only, no decisions made etc etc etc. You know, the sort of ringing endorsement you get from the Board when you’re 2 points above the relegation zone but the Board has full confidence. The Army are lapping it up.

If this sees light of day I’ll be stunned. Does Wiggy really want to be remembered as the CAS who made the ORs’ uniform look like the sort of garb you see worn on a Saturday afternoon in a northern shopping centre?

Pprune gets its own special mention and photograph. Sir Humphrey is watching you….

Some of the flameproof / fire retardant kit I have worn over the years lost it efficacy after being washed too many times . An excuse some smellies and stinkers would take not to wash very often .

If the 'high and mighty ' wish for a uniform change they could go 'retro' and bring back the battledress ! With chipbag of curse. I'll just get my greatcoat !.

What is it with the need for hats, whether they be berets, chip bags, SD or other?

I mean, everyone used to wear a hat up to the 50s, so I 7nderstand why the military have them - but people stopped wearing them routinely decades ago.

They aren’t essential for saluting - your arm goes up and down just as easily without one, what other purpose do they serve?

They are obvious uses for bonedomes, helmets and cold weather gear such as parka hoods. I can also ee the need for a baseball cap, or even a kepi, to keep off the sun in tropical climes - but hats?

https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/me...-wearing-hats/

What a humiliating, embarrassing mockery of uniform!
Never mind Trenchard turning in his grave, he'd be spinning at 5000rpm looking at that.
Thankfully, after 40+yrs I'm out and wearing something with a modicum of sense.

It all smacks of fiddling while Rome burns'.

Utterly cringeworthy. What has happened to the organisation, who would even suggest these changes, even in draft?

Have you seen the colour of the original uniform he approved (Sky blue), only changed because of the Russian Revolution……

https://www.rafweb.org/Ranks-Uniform/Ranks3.htm

With all this global warming, the solution is clearly KD.

There's going to be a ne
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b900d80f7.jpeg
w salute too.

Only Americans salute without a hat on.

A northern shopping centre - more likely an Essex chavy shopping centre.

Can't wait to see some big fat old FS in one of those skin tight numbers - Michelin Man impersonations here we come....

“They aren’t essential for saluting - your arm goes up and down just as easily without one, what other purpose do they serve?”

Because you salute the Officers’ cap or hat badge (i.e. the Crown), and not the person wearing it.

Anyway, just stick with whatever the Army wears. The RAF should absolutely retain the ethos of a fighting service, if just as a reminder to the troops.

Borrocks - you salute the Queen’s commission - which is why an officer gets a salute even if he is in civvies.

I can honestly never remember being saluted in Civvies…

YES. In my DISTAFF days at WAD and later across 11 Gp, I became convinced that large slabs of the Light Blue were thinking, and behaving, like a civilian outfit. Like the Chf Tech I encountered making his leisurely way to 44 Sqn’s hangar, at least 30 min if not more after the horn had gone off. Yes, in full V-Force days. “I had a quick shower and shave, Sir.” FFS. I made him double the rest of the way to his cup of peacetime coffee.

Wear Combat Dress. It doesn’t seem to stop the US forces, and others, from operating effectively. Dressing like a civvy chav would, IMO, have the opposite effect.
“Train in Peace the way you will fight a War”

[/rant]

To make it more appealing to the next generation ? surely the basics of the military stand without change, why is the system making these choices? and who advises them.

That says more about you than us......

Dressed in appropriate workwear, quite right. Coveralls for engineers; something warm for those of airfields, and shirt and slacks for those in offices? Is there need for hoodies and tracksuit bottoms?