"50 Shades of Green:" The Army's Ongoing Uniform Debacle

[Marauder06]

http://hitthewoodline.com/militaria/2013/10/30/uniformly-stupid-the-us-militarys-50-shades-of-green

Ground warfare used to be simple: “Move to the sound of the guns, and shoot anyone not dressed like you.” Things aren’t that simple in the US military these days, since first the Marines and then every other service abandoned the effective and “uniform” uniforms (battle dress uniforms, or BDUs, and desert combat uniforms, or DCUs) and began fielding a bewildering variety of service-specific (and often quite ridiculous) ground combat uniforms. The time, effort, and money wasted in these endeavors has been enormous, and the Army appears ready to repeat this blunder by rolling out a new ground combat uniform, it’s third in less than three years. The US military, particularly the Army, is so enamored with fixing uniform problems that didn’t even originally exist that it could be written up as a bad fiction novel; call it “50 Shades of Green.”

The Army’s uniform decision is even more perplexing given Congress’s guidance to all of the armed services to get their act together and stop wasting their time and taxpayer money on ridiculous new service-specific uniforms. This is important because while the Army leads the way in uniform-related stupidity, the other services have been guilty as well. And as crappy as the ACU is, at least it’s not the Navy’s blue “tactical” uniform (complete with fuzzy black boots) or the Air Force’s aborted “blue tiger stripe” uniform. Given this Congressional directive, the announcement of the Sergeant Major of the Army comes across as a huge GFY to Congress. “Yep, I heard what you said about one common uniform, but here in the Army, we’re doing our own thing.” There is no word yet if the Army-designed uniform will come with an integrated reflective belt.

 

[LibraryLady]

Our tax dollars at work.

LL

 

[BloodStripe]

http://gizmodo.com/the-history-of-invisibility-and-the-future-of-camouflag-1487381235

I didn't want to start a new thread on the subject (especially given the Army has already decided on it), but I thought this was a rather informative piece on why pixel's are more effective than "blobs".