I don’t really do too many field activities so for me it’s just easy to use for blues and greens for me.
For the shirt it a can be untucked or must be untucked?
On the softies / warm layer I think the old regs were that the green/sand CS95 and current light olive couldn’t be worn as outer.
But then we’ve seen lots of units (RM, Rangers, even some of the Cav regs, I’m sure I’ve seen a VSO in one too) with various soft shell and fleeces in mtp. I’m not sure if they are issued or private purchase, or blagged from US colleagues.
Pretty much everyone I see - Army, RM &RN and RAF air/ground crew - out in the wild, wears some kind of softie/carinthia as an outer layer. And no one seems to care about whether its MTP, or Green, or Tan.
It doesn’t make much a difference at a distance either - for the RAF people I see on the ground, it’s the 100ft, 25 ton dark green helicopter than gives them away, not whether their softie is tan or MTP….
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Like many people, No. 3 is just another office uniform for me and shouldn’t be conflated with what I’d actually wear in the field on ops. 9/10 times I’ll wear it with a stable belt and the sleeves rolled up, but for IRT weekends — even though we only get on the DCCT these days — I’ll wear a green belt.
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I don’t agree. Pretty much every other nation I can think of wears them untucked and it’s how they were designed. It’s great for airflow.
It’s a jacket. Not a shirt.
Barrack shirts look good tucked in.
That bit of Velcro that inevitably sits right above your belt is the greatest argument for demonstrating they were never designed to be tucked in…
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is
and words
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You guys don’t tuck your GPJ into your trousers?
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Thanks for the idea. Noted.
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What your missing tho is that most cadets and RAF personnel don’t have barrick shirts do to the Resson they changed over to in being tucked in.
And jacket it a term I would give it because other shirts like CS95 have had been called Jackets but worn like a shirt.
What about the teeny ones who will be utterly swamped in the new PCS lightweight kilt jackets?
WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?‽‽‽
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Sure, but that’s why it’s important to consider how it’s made and what it’s made of.
Imagine civilian clothes.
Thinner undergarments like shirts are tucked in.
Even if you have something which is designed like a shirt, the moment you make it with thicker fabrics or cut the cloth in a certain way, you tuck it in.
Typically, flat-bottomed garments are not tucked in.
Flat bottomed linen shirts are made to be worn untucked.
Shirts with longer front and back and shorter sides are made to be tucked in.
The problem we have time and again with uniform and clothing in the military is that people don’t understand the history and reasons for clothing before they make decisions about how we should wear it.
Socks are a great example.
Socks should match your trousers, not your shoes (or you can deliberately break the rule and wear your loud socks - but that’s something that comes from understanding how to break rules in a stylish way and it doesn’t always as work). Socks should not match your shoes.
Leathers should match, but officers wear brown gloves with black shoes.
You see my point? The people who have made these core dress decisions haven’t understood many things about the history of style and clothing.
Tucking in a jacket is just the latest in a long list of things that are, frankly, very weird.
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Very much so. It seems like a officers has said somewere that they were made to be untucked so that’s put it into regs..
It’s a shame because the British Military has always been very smart and it seems we’re slipping away from that.
Very good point my PCS shirt is far to long for me it untucked would be a nightmare maybe a even a tripping hazard 
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This is very subjective and it’s not apparent that things are going that way for the reasons you’ve provided.
Uniforms of the service haven’t always been tucked in.
We used to essentially wear No1 uniform to war…
I think we should be focussing on utility and comfort for practical clothing, so whether that’s wearing a utility uniform properly so we’re able to do a variety of things without getting changed, or our office wear is made of actual cotton and other breathable fibers, things need to change in that regard.
People describe our blue uniform as smart and insist on ironing creases in it etc, but then we issue plastic clothes that fit poorly…
So smartness is definitely subjective and I’d argue not what is important. Improving other aspects like fit will immediately make it appear smarter.
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Well if they were focusing on making it fit well they need make sure that it fits people what is a whole other issue. For example my PCS shirt is hurge when untucked (I am very thin and small so hard to get them to fit) and it would just look stupid if I was to wear it like that.
I see your point but if it was me in charge and we needed shirts to be untucked I would go for a new design completely so that they still look smart but also paratical for people to use.
Our padre always wears odd socks - not “odd = strange” but different coloured socks on each foot!
[going off topic]
so the next version of ACP1358c will have “RAF blue socks” rather than black?
(does the same apply to tights for those who where skirts?)
[/going off topic]
I distinctly remember that when I was a cadet the females wore blue-grey tights, but by the time I transferred to the RAF Reserves – 15 or so years later – they had changed to black.
The real question is, when are we getting MTP socks?
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I think part of the problem is that the military can’t decide what a jacket is.
The barracks shirt is apparently a shirt, but the identical garment in DPM was called a lightweight jacket.
So, if I have the first pattern of MTP, where the garment that looks like the barracks shirt is called a Lightweight Jacket, do I tuck that in or not?
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