Audio of this text is dropped at you by the Air & Area Forces Affiliation, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their households. Discover out extra at afa.org
The Air Power just lately tightened its requirements on mustaches and sideburns to adjust to Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth’s strict new steering on facial hair.
Airmen mustaches “should not transcend the corners of the mouth or right into a respirator seal zone,” in keeping with an Oct. 29 memorandum updating parts of the Air Power rules on costume and private look.
The up to date steering reverses the relaxed mustache requirements the Air Power permitted in 2022. That coverage allowed Airmen to put on barely longer mustaches that did “not transcend a horizontal line extending throughout the corners of the mouth and not more than 1/4-inch past a vertical line drawn from the nook of the mouth,” a typical the Air Power initially retained in its July 2025 replace to its costume and private look instruction.
The brand new steering additionally takes a barely stricter stance on sideburns. The service had allowed Airmen to put on sideburns that prolonged to the “backside of the orifice of the ear opening,” in keeping with the July 2025 replace.
The brand new coverage dictates that sideburns “will probably be above the ear opening.”
The adjustments to Air Power private look coverage come a month after Hegseth informed tons of of U.S. navy leaders he supposed to impose stringent new grooming requirements throughout the pressure.
“We’re going to chop our hair, shave our beards, and cling to requirements,” Hegseth informed an viewers of generals and senior enlisted leaders. “It’s just like the damaged home windows concept of policing. You let the small stuff go, the large stuff finally goes. So it’s a must to handle the small stuff.”
Hegseth’s speech was accompanied by a Sept. 30 memo directing the providers to return to pre-2010 look requirements that usually don’t authorize facial hair waivers.
The brand new coverage forbids beards, goatees, and different facial hair that might intrude with a correct seal on a chemical protecting masks or firefighter respirator, the Sept. 30 memo states.
“Uniform grooming requirements are usually not about look; they’re about survivability, interoperability, and mission execution,” the memo states. “Constant enforcement ensures personnel can function protecting gear, meet deployment necessities, and assist fight and emergency operations.
For medical circumstances, Hegseth directed that every one waivers be restricted to 12 months and people with everlasting circumstances be evaluated for separation.
Hegseth additionally directed that service members with non secular lodging be deemed nondeployable, a standing that might basically finish their careers in the event that they go greater than a yr with out deploying.
Service secretaries have till Nov. 30 to submit implementation plans to the Beneath Secretary of Struggle for Personnel and Readiness, the memo states, referring to the secondary title for the division permitted by President Donald Trump.
Audio of this text is dropped at you by the Air & Area Forces Affiliation, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their households. Discover out extra at afa.org