Navy Says Beards Are a Safety Risk, Gives Sailors 1 Year to Shave

Sailors whose medical conditions prevent daily shaving now have up to 12 months of treatment options before the Navy evaluates them for continued service and, in some cases, administrative separation.

A safety argument has ensued around facial hair, with the service saying it can break the seal on the masks that keep a crew breathing through fire or gas. Behind this argument sits a study the Navy has kept close to the vest.

NAVADMIN 162/26, released July 7 under the signature of Vice Adm. Jeffrey J. Czerewko, The order reverses the Navy’s 2022 policy, which prohibited separation solely because PFB treatment had failed, and ends what two retired officers writing in Proceedings described as a roughly four-decade practice of allowing renewable medical accommodations.

In place of that open-ended allowance, the message sets a countdown for any Sailor who now gets twelve months of medical treatment to reach a clean-shaven standard, and those who cannot get there are headed toward a separation board.

Most of the men caught by the change carry the same diagnosis. Pseudofolliculitis barbae, the ingrown-hair condition better known as razor bumps, afflicts roughly 60% of Black men, according to the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology, and it worsens with the very act the policy now demands.

Shaving vs Separation

The order’s demands are clearly detailed, stating only a commanding officer may grant a medical waiver, and even then only as part of a documented treatment plan.

These waivers will arrive in 90-day blocks, four at most, and they expire in one year. Facial hair stays under a quarter inch, and anyone who relies on breathing gear draws a mask-fit check every three months.

After twelve months, if the Sailor is still unable to shave and the condition is marked as “unmanageable”, this will firmly place them in a “separation due to failure to comply with grooming standards” scenario. Anyone who refuses outright, rather than one who tries treatment and fails, is handled differently, as a military justice matter.

The service is giving itself some leeway as well, since no separations will begin until a year after the July 7 release, a delay it says commands need in order to rewrite local guidance and counsel the Sailors involved.

Mustaches survive the change untouched, and so do beards on special operators when a mission demands one, though even those troops must go smooth where a chemical or nuclear threat runs high.

None of this applies to religious accommodations, which the Navy is handling on a separate track and requires them to resubmit their requests under tighter review.

Unreleased Study

The justification for these changes is simply safety. “Grooming standards add to sailor and mission safety and ensure the safe and proper utilization of protective equipment in all naval environments and operational conditions,” the message states.

Yet the service has already put that premise to the test. In 2023, under a review ordered by the Secretary of the Navy, the review examined how facial hair affects gas-mask function, and its findings have never been made public.

Publicly available evidence is more complicated than the Navy’s language suggests. A 2018 pilot study involving 19 men and one model of half-face elastomeric respirator found that 98% of tests passed with beards trimmed to one-eighth of an inch. At one-quarter inch, the maximum permitted under the Navy waiver, the pass rate fell to 81%.

Researchers found that fit generally declined as beard length and density increased. Current federal safety guidance also warns that hair crossing the sealing surface of a tight-fitting respirator can reduce protection.

What the public evidence does not answer is how medically authorized beards perform with the Navy’s specific masks, under shipboard conditions, or whether less restrictive alternatives could meet the same safety requirement.

The number of sailors riding on that unproven argument is considerable: around 6,400 receive a diagnosis of a chronic skin condition each year that affects grooming, according to an email from Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, obtained by USNI News. In that message, Caudle pressed leaders to keep the rollout impersonal and frame it in a professional light.

Uncooperative Condition

For those afflicted, biology cannot conform to a NAVADMIN. Pseudofolliculitis barbae is chronic and largely genetic, the result of curved hairs that turn back into the skin the moment they are cut close.

Peer-reviewed clinical literature archived by the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed Central reports that stopping close shaving is the most effective way to prevent new lesions.

Policy is leaning on a Laser Reduction technique, which can thin a beard for good; will this be an outcome sailors find acceptable, though? A 2019 study of the procedure documented side effects ranging from pain to scarring. A sailor who refuses the laser, or who tries it and watches it fail, is left with the treatment clock still running against them.

That twelve-month clock does not fall evenly across the fleet because the condition tracks with coarse, curly hair and presses hardest on Black sailors.

Writing in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings in September, retired Navy Capt. John Cordle and retired Air Force Col. Emily Wong put the historical waiver population near 30,000, roughly a tenth of the force. Their research pointed to one carrier strike group that came home from combat with more than 500 aboard.

They flagged a 2021 study linking shaving waivers to slower promotions among a group that was majority Black. A January review in the journal Cutis added a quieter warning of its own, that the new rules pile fresh paperwork and clinical demands onto sailors, medical staff, and commanders all at once.

Credit: 

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class John Farren 

USS MASON (DDG 87) 

Hurry Up and Wait

None of this puts the Navy ahead of the Pentagon. Its message carries out an August 2025 order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pushed for a smooth-shaven force since his first weeks in office and told a hall of generals and admirals last fall that the era of unprofessional appearance was over.

The Marine Corps set its own one-year limit in the spring, with separations there holding until October, and Army and Air Force standards have tightened in step.

What none of the services has done, even as they tighten those standards, is to open the underlying evidence for review. The sea service is enforcing a separation clock based on a safety claim; its own study was meant to weigh it, and that study remains sealed.

Thousands of sailors now face the deadline, with the burden expected to fall disproportionately on Black sailors because of PFB’s prevalence among men with tightly curled facial hair.

As of Friday, the Navy had neither released its 2023 findings nor explained why they stayed under wraps. Asked directly whether the new rules fall hardest on Black sailors, given how closely razor bumps track with coarse, curly hair, the service answered in a single sentence. “The Navy policy is in compliance with the Secretary of War’s memorandum on grooming standards,” a Navy official told Military.com.

In that one line, the reply named a memo but not the men it covers, leaving the question the whole policy turns on, whether these beards endanger anyone at all, where the service has left it, unanswered.