The Navy is dealing with what could be called a sartorial crisis: The sea service has run out of pants. And it may not get more for months.
Specifically, service officials confirmed Friday that pants for the Navy Working Uniform, or NWU, the go-to uniform for most sailors, are out of stock at Navy Exchanges.
Courtney Williams, a spokeswoman for the Navy’s Exchange Service Command, told Military.com that it is “experiencing severe shortages of NWU trousers” both in physical stores and online.
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Online out-of-stock notifications, which told sailors that the pants were “not available for purchase in any size” first made it to social media on Thursday.
Williams said that current pants stock levels are around 13% worldwide, and the exchange is focused on providing what inventory it has to new recruits at Recruit Training Command in Illinois, the Naval Academy Preparatory School in Rhode Island, and the officer training schools.
The Navy Working Uniform is one of the few uniforms that sailors are allowed to not only perform work in but also wear pretty much anywhere off base — including to places such as restaurants and stores. As a result of this multi-purpose role, individual NWU components including pants and blouses are replaced more frequently because, unlike a purely working uniform such as coveralls, they cannot have…
