Seymour Johnson runs the first ground test of AIRUS

The first operational look at AIRUS happened on the ground, not in the air. Over two days in February 2023, female pilots and weapons systems officers of the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina, fitted the system, sat in the aircraft with it, and worked through the integration problems that only appear once a device meets a real harness.

Developmental test support came from the 46th Test Squadron and the 28th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The structure was deliberate: units perform ground integration events with the system and the aircraft, and the resulting human-systems-integration feedback goes back to the manufacturer. Seymour Johnson was the first of five bases scheduled for ground evaluation, with flight test to follow.

The problem the test was scoped against was well documented and badly served. Existing in-flight relief options were built around male anatomy, which left female aircrew with three choices on a long sortie: adult diapers, holding it, or a bag system requiring the crew member to unstrap from the seat and gear — a process that can take the better part of an hour and introduces the risk of leaving a strap unsecured. The fourth choice, and the common one, was to stop drinking. Tactical dehydration reduces G-tolerance by roughly half and brings headaches and degraded judgement with it.

AIRUS entered the program through a 2020 Air Force challenge to design bladder relief systems for female pilots. Eleven companies won that round; AIRION Health was one of two awarded prototyping contracts in 2022. The system tested at Seymour Johnson was a cup-liner interface worn under flight-suit underwear, connected to a pump and controller that move fluid away from the body into a collection bag — the same architecture now fielded across four services.

The design process is the part worth carrying forward. AIRION brought in female clinical and operational experts to shape the interface rather than adapting a male-driven design, which is why the shape range exists at all. Every later configuration — the wider female A–S range, the rotary-wing work, the ISS demonstration — traces back to feedback gathered in events like this one.

The objective stated at the time still describes the product: aircrew should be able to relieve themselves without unstrapping. Three years on, that is what AIRUS does, on more than 100 SKUs orderable through GSA Advantage.