This is the first positive comment about the Air Force that I have heard from an Army guy and it is about our fashion sense. Wonderful.
And on top of that, AF guys hate our own PT gear.
Give me gray cotton blend shorts and plain gray t-shirt anyday. Put a huge reflective USAF on the back and the goofy AF wings on the front if necessary, otherwise make them cheap and easy to clean. Gray cotton/lycra/polyester blend is cheap. It's easy to clean. Win. For the dedicated runners (those who run more than about 3 miles at a time), make some official no-chafe nylon running shorts available. But for general PT use, generic gray cotton shorts work great. Just don't make the legs too long so they don't bind due to being down to the knees (I don't play basketball and I'm not a black gangster or a mormon) and don't have the leg openings too huge 'cause we gotta do situps and I don't need whoever is holding my feet to be staring at my junk. I'm sure that Adidas, Puma, Nike, whoever, has some shorts in stock TODAY that would work just fine, no R&D costs, nothing.
Yea it wouldn't look terribly stylish... Big effing deal. I'm not doing PT to compete for butt/abs of the decade, I'm doing PT because I'm a fatazz and need to exercise more.
Damn uniform boards ALWAYS get it wrong. If some stupid recruit wants to quit because he doesn't think the PT gear is stylish enough, then he can quit for all I care. It should be functional above all, and the current USAF PT gear is expensive, doesn't breath right, isn't cut right, either shows off your junk or binds up your legs because it's cut waaaay too long, or is "normal" size but has too tight of a waist. I don't know anyone with a 40 inch inseam and 20 inch waist, but that's no kidding what I measured the last time I bought some AF shorts. I had to buy XXXL to fit my fatazz 36 inch waist and had my wife cut nearly 6 inches off of the leg length because they went below my knees.
Admiring the USAF for it's PT gear is a bit like admiring some guy with 400 sq ft of spoiler bolted to the hatch of his scion... There's just something wrong with that picture.