She then sought a waiver that would allow her to fly. Ruttenber, a KC-135 pilot, remembers being pulled out of her first pilot training class in 2005 because her physical examination indicated that she didn’t meet the standing height requirement of 5-foot-4 by a fraction of an inch. After meeting with Roper, the Women’s Initiative group was granted $4 million for the study. “There were so many communities we had to coordinate with that we realized really quickly that this has to come from the top down or we’re not going to be as successful,” Ruttenber said. Chris Dawson, the career field manager for the Air National Guard’s career enlisted aviators, on trying to garner funding for an anthropometric study for CEAs. The C-130 and C-17 still eliminate one out of three women from flying it,” she said.įor more than a year, the Women’s Initiative Group worked with Chief Master Sgt. “ the next inter-theater airlift that is going to replace the C-130 or C-17, we can’t get the anthropometric data wrong or women are still going to be eliminated 30 years from now. Ruttenber said the new guidance addresses the root of the problem by establishing new design specifications - ensuring platforms are engineered to accommodate a wide range of body sizes from the start of the development process, rather than papering over the problem with waivers after the fact. And without even knowing it, they’re kind of cut and pasting the same standard.” “People are trying to do the right thing, but the barriers are baked into legacy policy. Jessica Ruttenber, an Air Force mobility planner and a leader of the Women’s Initiative Team that advocated for the change in anthropometric standards. “It is a hidden barrier with multiple layers,” said Lt. Then, when future requirements are defined for new platforms or equipment, the systems are usually designed to meet the existing pool of pilots, creating a self-perpetuating problem. The legacy design parameters - which stem from a 1967 survey of male pilots and measure everything from a pilot’s standing height, eye height while sitting, and reach - have effectively barred 44 percent of women from being able to fly aircraft unless they receive a waiver, with women of color disproportionately affected, the Air Force stated.Įven after a waiver is granted, the pilot will remain disqualified from certain platforms regardless of his or her aptitude. Currently, career enlisted aviators also must meet the 1967 anthropometric standards. These eight cases use measurement data from the Centers for Disease Control and represent a range of body types including individuals who are short in stature, have short limbs or have a long torso.ĪFLCMC’s Airman’s Accommodations Laboratory will also run a three-year study that will develop separate anthropometric standards for career enlisted aviators, who perform specialized jobs onboard military aircraft including flight engineers, flight attendants and loadmasters. Air Force.īut until that wraps up, all new-start Air Force programs must be designed with cockpits, aircrew operating stations and aircrew equipment that accommodates eight anthropometric data sets. population eligible for recruitment in the U.S. The new guidance directs the Air Force Lifecycle Management Center to conduct a study that will solidify a more inclusive anthropometric standard that would include 95 percent of the U.S. “But if we begin with a recruitment population that we’ve artificially halved because of how we design our cockpits and workstations, we’ve just doubled our work, and now we make every operator in the seat have to be eight times better than the counterpart they will face in a nation like China.” “All well and good when you’re a country that’s going to face a country with a population that’s four times your own by the end of this decade,” he said. “The human factor is a delineator and it likely will be against an adversary like China, where I believe we will have a greater propensity to trust the operator in the seat, to delegate more, to empower more and take greater risk in that delegation,” Roper told Defense News in an exclusive Aug.
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