The Navy Times notes US Naval aviators (not pilots; pilots are the guys that drive the boats) are “chafing” at fairly new rules on the wear of their flight suits.

The January policy required black T-shirts be worn with green suits and brown T-shirts be worn with tan suits. It also relegated graduate-level aircrew training patches to the right shoulder and required garrison caps to be stuffed into either leg pocket with the zipper open and cap exposed.

One aviator summarized this as all of the bad parts of the Air Force rules (which also recently changed) and none of the good: 

“Having us wear flight suits, standardized patches, all black shirts — we’ve basically gone to the Air Force way of wearing it, but I’m still going to get attacked” off base if I’m seen with my flight suit on, an aviator said at a forum Sept. 10, bringing applause and cheers from the standing-room-only crowd.

Historically, the Navy has a ‘looser’ standard of regulations than does the Air Force.  The stereotype is that in the Air Force, you can do it if the rules say you can; in the Navy, you can do it if the rules don’t say you can’t.

Vice Admiral Allen Myers seemed to validate the aviators’ concerns, saying “we’re going to fix it” with a revision that will give individual unit commanders the authority to make decisions about flight suits — though that revision has yet to be approved.