Introduction

The PCIAW Round Table on Defence and Security Uniforms, hosted on 2nd October 2025, focused on the fit challenges in clothing and body armour across diverse workforces. The discussion brought together industry stakeholders, end-users, standards bodies, and advocacy organisations to address systemic issues in the provision of protective clothing for diverse personnel, particularly women serving in military and security roles.

Background and Context

This round table represented a convergence of two critical PCIAW® work streams: defence and security uniforms, and inclusive professional clothing. The catalyst emerged during development of British Standard BS 30417 for inclusive PPE provision, Chaired by aPCIAW® Board Director.

During public consultation, SecurityWomen, an advocacy organisation established in 2015 to increase women's representation in military and security sectors, submitted particularly probing feedback on the challenges facing women in operational environments whilst wearing uniforms and PPE.

SecurityWomen's engagement emerged from international connections highlighting inadequate protective equipment for female soldiers. Through contacts in Ukraine, they learned that women soldiers on front lines lacked adequate protective clothing. This prompted connections with the UK Ministry of Defence and broader examination of equipment provision internationally.

Their detailed feedback led to meetings revealing that defence and security sectors face distinct challenges requiring additional consideration beyond workplace-focused PPE guidance. Recognising this gap, PCIAW® convened this dedicated round table, bringing together operational military personnel, body armour manufacturers, textile suppliers, testing institutes, and international organisations supporting uniformed women in peace operations.

Challenges in Defence PPE Provision

The persistent use of "unisex" terminology throughout military procurement masks a fundamental reality: current equipment is designed for male anatomy with minor adaptations. Operational personnel from a contributing European defence force emphasised that if one word could be banned from military lexicon, it would be "unisex".

Personnel are repeatedly told their uniforms are unisex when the reality demonstrates otherwise. Uniforms were reported to incorporate excess groin material whilst failing to acommodate hip width and bust measurements, resulting in snagging on obstacles, restricted movement, and compromised tactical effectiveness.

The inadequacies extend far beyond discomfort into measurable safety deficits. Analysis by defence PPE manufacturers has revealed that women wearing standard-sized SAPI plates experience approximately 7% less ballistic coverage than men in angled shot scenarios. This disparity results from the geometric reality that flat ballistic plates project away from the torso due to breast volume, creating exposure areas that would not exist on male anatomy.

More alarmingly, approximately 70% of female service personnel within a major European defence force are smaller than the standard one-size-fits-all hard armour plate currently issued, overburdening the majority of personnel it is meant to protect.

Operational Performance Degradation

The operational consequences manifest in what military personnel have termed "T-Rex arms", restricting range of motion from improperly fitted body armour that directly impacts weapon handling capability. Industry observations confirm this is not isolated complaint but universal operational concern: every single female operative's first action after donning ballistic equipment is testing range of motion, particularly arm extension and weapon manipulation movements.

Research conducted with French Army personnel and the Royal Military School in Brussels identified that in 90% of cases, ballistic plates on women sit too low on the body. This positioning occurs because plates create breast pressure, causing personnel to loosen vests for relief, which allows the entire system to drop. This creates cascading problems:shoulder pressure bearing all weight, back and hip issues, and critically, vests not remaining tight to the body during movement. The energy expenditure required to compensate reduces operational endurance, as personnel must either hold equipment manually, operating single-handed, or overtighten systems to the point of respiratory compromise.

The long-term health impacts are severe. Operational personnel report permanent scarring along spine and hips from prolonged wear, such as friction burns where body armour stems rub continuously during operational activities.

SecurityWomen emphasised that tolerance of such injuries is unacceptable from health and safety perspectives. Under health and safety law, all employers, including military organisations, bear responsibility for minimising workplace risks. When equipment design directly causes predictable injuries to identifiable population segments, failure to address this represents breach of fundamental duty of care.

The interaction between helmet systems and hair presents a specific technical challenge demonstrating broader failure to consider diverse physical characteristics. When hair is secured in buns or ponytails as regulations require, it interferes with helmet stability.

In prone firing positions, hair forces helmets forward, obstructing vision and compromising safety. This issue extends beyond military contexts to emergency services, where operational firefighters have nearly left the service due to severe headaches from tucking hair into helmets, ultimately cutting their hair purely to wear helmets effectively. Solutions, including recommendations to cut hair, place the burden on individuals rather than addressing equipment inadequacy, which is not conducive to recruitment and retention of women in defence and security sector.

SecurityWomen cited a recent report which claimed that the Australian Defence Force would struggle to operate a functioning military if they did not recruit more women. As such, the issues around the lack of provision of inclusive PPE should be viewed as a recruitment and retention challenge, to ensure diverse populations can be valued and equipped with fit-for-form PPE.

Standards and Testing Methodology Gaps

A critical regulatory gap exists in protection standards for ballistic equipment. Whilst NIJ standards are widely used internationally for ballistic plates, no testing standard exists for female-specific body armour, including no standards for side angle protection despite increased exposure from plate curvature around female anatomy. This creates problematic circular dependency: industry can design comfortable equipment, but procuring organisations consistently ask what standard it has been tested to. Without established standards, verification frameworks for adequate protection do not exist. Some specifications within major European defence forces were written in 1984, unchanged despite four decades of textile technology advancement.

The question facing industry and procurement alike is fundamental: must standards come first, or should agencies and end-users drive demand that necessitates standard development? This impasse is complicated further by defence procurement's exemption from standard PPE regulations in European contexts. Defence organisations can select pieces from various standards without full garment certification.

Innovations in Comfort and Mobility Assessment

Significant progress has been achieved in developing methodologies to assess comfort and mobility characteristics of ballistic protection systems. Collaborative work between testing institutes and aramid fibre manufacturers has produced three complementary test methods that quantify how well armour conforms to body contours and responds to movement.

The Lower Costal Bending Test measures energy required to fold ballistic panels in single direction, correlating to how much wearers must "fight" garments. The Double CurvatureCompression Test, initially termed the "Pringles test" after distinctively curved potato crisps, uses positive and negative curved modules to compress ballistic panels, measuring deformation energy as materials adapt to saddle-form body contours.

The Edge Pressure Test measures force at vest edges contacting body during movement, including neck, chin, arms, lower abdomen. These methodologies have been made freely available, representing an innovative approach to testing that has been specifically designed to measure comfort, which is typically difficult to quantify.

Testing institutes have indicated capability to develop female-specific testing protocols, potentially modifying double curvature compression tests to incorporate forms representing female breast anatomy, drawing upon databases of approximately 18,000three-dimensional body scans. However, existing methodologies might provide sufficient insight before investing in highly specialised development.

Four-dimensional scanning capabilities, which are three-dimensional movies capturing body movement and equipment interaction, offers potential for comprehensive assessment of equipment performance in dynamic scenarios. Successfully applied to evaluate work trouser gusset construction, this methodology could assess ballistic carrier designs and equipment systems under operational conditions. Whilst unlikely to become an official standard, it offers substantial value during product evaluation. The critical principal emerging is that equipment should be tested together as integrated systems during tender or development stages rather than evaluated in isolation.

Physiological Considerations and Inclusive Design

Fire-retardant sports bras currently available lack adequate support, forcing personnel to choose between safety features and functional requirements during vigorous activity.Typical issue garments are essentially "sleeping bras", which are unstructured slip garments providing minimal support. Some military organisations provide allowances for personnel to source commercial sports bras, but these prove inadequate. A majorEuropean military organisation provides £50 for this purpose, yet personnel must still contribute personal funds, and commercial items typically lack flame-resistant properties required in certain operational environments.

Innovation from commercial compression garment manufacturers demonstrates potential solutions. Products using zoned graduated compression with OEKO-TEX certification, developed through work with naval and military organisations on sizing systems, have shown promise in wear tests with police and fire personnel in extreme conditions.However, incorporating flame-retardant properties whilst maintaining support characteristics remains a development challenge.

Universal Design Principles

Operational personnel have raised requirements for breathable materials accommodating not only environmental climate but also hormonal fluctuations and menopausal symptoms. They have also suggested period absorbency built into uniform design. These considerations reflect the broader principle that uniform systems should accommodate full physiological requirements rather than requiring improvised solutions.

Importantly, research has consistently demonstrated that solutions developed for female personnel often address problems male personnel also experience. Solutions addressing equipment sitting too low or ensuring vests remain tight to the body during movement benefit all personnel regardless of gender. Improvements in breathability, thermoregulation, reduced weight, and enhanced mobility represent universal advantages rather than niche requirements. The "too difficult" or "too expensive" arguments against inclusive provision are unfounded when considered from whole-system perspectives.

‍Procurement, Standards Development and Industry Response

British Standard BS 30417 establishes key principles for inclusive PPE provision: workforce analysis before procurement, stakeholder engagement throughout specification and selection, supply chain collaboration, and continuous assessment. The standard has been made freely accessible to maximise adoption. However, SecurityWomen emphasised that whilst excellent guidance, it remains non-mandatory. Health and safety law already requires employers to minimise risks, yet equipment demonstrably fails to adequately protect female personnel. Relying on voluntary adoption is insufficient; regulation and enforcement must ensure appropriate protection becomes mandatory.

During public consultation, SecurityWomen's probing questions led to recognition that additional standards specifically addressing defence-orientated inclusivity considerations, covering policing, peacekeeping, and operational military scenarios are probably needed.

European-level standardisation efforts are underway, building upon the British framework.SecurityWomen emphasised importance of international standardisation through NATO and United Nations frameworks, noting personnel operating together in multinational environments should receive equivalent protection regardless of which nation's forces they serve within.

Transforming Procurement Practice

Procurement volume and contract duration significantly influence research and development investment. Buyers can drive changes by specifying that suppliers must accommodate defined percentages of female personnel or cannot supply anybody. This shifts obligation to industry whilst ensuring buyers create demand justifying development investment. However, suppliers cannot be expected to invest without either being asked todo so or being given sufficiently long contracts to justify investment. This requires collaborative effort across the entire supply chain.

The critical importance of end-user feedback throughout development cannot be overstated. Prototyping and extensive wear trials prove essential. No value exists in laboratory development without operational testing with personnel who will actually use equipment. Integrated system testing rather than evaluating isolated items is crucial, as conflicts and compatibility issues only emerge when complete ensembles are worn operationally. Additionally, female personnel should be present during fitting processes, representing both dignity concerns and practical considerations, as female fitters better understand specific fit requirements and challenges.

Industry Innovation and Development

Significant development activity is underway addressing female-specific ballistic protection. Defence PPE manufacturers are rapidly developing women's-specific hard armour plate shapes in multiple sizes, with delivery anticipated within six months of products stopping both non-armour-piercing and armour-piercing rounds with curved plates, remarkably rapid development enabled by partial customer funding. Emphasis is being placed on considering complete solutions including soft armour and carrier integration, recognising that ballistic protection functions as integrated systems.

North American defence clothing suppliers have recently launched female-fitted carrier and plate systems in partnership with aerospace defence manufacturers, reportedly well received by major European military procurement organisations. Meanwhile, European textile manufacturers working with military organisations and research institutions have tested various approaches including pre-formed ballistic packs, though these were rejected as pre-forming assumes specific breast shapes not matching all individuals.

Commercial sector innovation also offers valuable capabilities. Compression garment technology originally developed for post-surgical breast recovery has proven applicable to law enforcement and emergency services, demonstrating how commercial sector advances in moisture management, compression technology, and advanced construction techniques can address operational requirements.

Recommendations and Conclusions

Urgent priorities for standardisation include establishing methodologies verifying that anatomically contoured hard armour provides equivalent protection across relevant threat scenarios; developing comprehensive specifications for female-specific body armour addressing ballistic coverage, comfort and mobility performance, and anthropometric accommodation; creating defence-sector specific inclusive PPE guidance addressing operational requirements and extreme environmental conditions; and coordinating across national and alliance standards bodies to ensure consistent international approaches.

Procuring organisations must conduct comprehensive workforce analysis, mandate inclusive specification requirements as threshold requirements rather than aspirational goals, implement robust evaluation protocols with representative user groups, establish long-term supply relationships supporting manufacturer investment, and facilitate cross-sector collaboration enabling knowledge sharing.

Manufacturers and suppliers must invest in inclusive design capability, engage end-users throughout development, prioritise innovation in critical areas including curved ballistic plates and advanced materials meeting multiple performance requirements simultaneously, support standardisation efforts through contributing technical expertise, and adopt transparent performance reporting enabling informed procurement decisions.

The discussion revealed that inadequate protective equipment provision for diverse personnel represents serious, systemic issues affecting safety, operational effectiveness, and organisational capability across military and security sectors globally. Whilst significant progress is occurring, new testing methodologies, innovative product development, and evolving standards – substantial work remains to translate these developments into universal access to appropriately fitted, adequately protective equipment for all serving personnel.

Success requires sustained commitment from all stakeholders. SecurityWomen's engagement with inclusive PPE standard development exemplifies how advocacy organisations can drive meaningful change through evidence-based engagement with standards bodies and industry. Their work highlighting inadequacies has catalysed important conversations about whether voluntary guidance suffices or whether regulatory enforcement becomes necessary to ensure appropriate protection.

Personnel inadequately protected due to ill-fitting equipment face increased injury and casualty risk in operational environments. Organisations failing to provide appropriate equipment undermine recruitment, retention, and operational capability.

As SecurityWomen emphasised, the Australian Defence Service has publicly stated that failure to recruit women threatens their ability to maintain adequate defence force staffing levels. Inclusive equipment provision is not merely an equality issue but a fundamental operational requirement for modern defence and security organisations committed to protecting all personnel who serve.

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