The US Army has started fielding Multicam (and a version of its own uniform with brown mixed in) in Afghanistan as part of an experiment on whether to switch (again) its uniforms. The Army adopted its blue-grey ACU pattern in 2003 under the orders of General Schoomaker, which decision ignored tests that the Natick Labs had conducted showing the superiority of several other patterns. It’s dubious to have a single world-wide camo in any case, but if there is to be such, the ACU (sometimes called UCP) is not it. A crummy camo is bad for esprit de corps and will get our soldiers killed. There is literally no reason other than inertia to keep this crap camo that was adopted contrary to all of Natick’s testing.
Consider, would you rather be wearing this
Or this
Interestingly, and in a story I did not see much run-up to this decision, but the British have adopted Multicam as well for all of their forces in Afghanistan. We meanwhile have spent a ton of money to outfit our troops with a camo pattern that failed in tests, is much worse than the woodland/desert combination of uniforms that it replaced, defies common sense (are woods blue?), costs lives, and hurts army morale.
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Thanks for the heads up on the British Army.
I believe multicam is superior to the new pattern on the ACU. However, my biggest beef with the new uniforms has always been that all four major services opted for their own unique designs.
In this day and age of budget deficits and dwindling resources I cannot believe the four services wasted money on developing separate designs. I think the way they all adopted BDUs in the 1980s should have been repeated with the revised look.
I especially can’t see how the Navy or Air Force needed their own patterns. That was a total waste of money.
Typical interservice vanity. The USMC should have simply relented and let everyone use their design, which is a good one.
nope the army should of went to multi cam dont blame the corps for the army/airforces stupid mistake
its the easieast dec a private in the 82 nd airborne can do better than a 4 star
the generals should be in levinworth for wasting billions of dollars of tax payer money
They did actually, but all the armed forces said no. They lost their chance.
The second gen ACU is much better. Has the tan in place of the light green. But it still needs work.
There is no way on this planet that one pattern will work in all environments. It was a pipe dream. To be honest, we need more than 2. But I am not a professional camo scientist.
Either way, the inter-service non-sense has to end. We spend billions in out of touch redundancies.
We have dozens of redundant uniforms.
We have redundant commands.
We have mission over lap for no reason other than one service wants something in that area as well.
Multiple redundant equipment systems.
And on top of all that, we spend billions on Joint Operations that wouldn’t need to be spend if there wasn’t inter-service nonsense to be “joining”. We have liason officers that do nothing but get caught in the middle.
It’s beyond time for that system to be replaced by a single united armed forces. There is nothing wrong with removing the services and the rivalries that go along with them. It waste resources and time.
easy dec making process to make go to socom ask the operators what works than do it
instead its a long political drawn out process that military personel are getting killed wearing blue uniforms in the desert
i do believe the acu sucks, but as i am looking at my uniform right now, there is no blue in it. don’t know where the author of this article got that from. i’m excited to get multicam in a few weeks when i go over to afghanistan.
Okay, Some good points here save one. “A single united armed forces”? I hope that you are not serious. There should in now way be one force. That is to big to even manage for one and second there are things called pride and camaraderie. The Romans and Greeks even had more than one unit. Each branch has its own specialty. Nothing against the Army but you are not as specialized at an amphibious landing just like the Marines wouldn’t know about being a paratroop. One armed force would be a total disaster thats why not one respectable military has ever had one. Even drug cartels have a Navy. This is just pure ignorance. Think of rivalries as competition. Competition and gols are what make people better. Sure we have the same goals but to be the best at them is what makes units better. Is there one unified tire maker? Car company? Weapons manufacture? No because they all have the same goal but they all want to be the best. It is not wasting recourses or money in anyway. We have just spent more money on national healthcare and “jobs” than the 2 wars combined in the past 10 years.
Stop the penny pinching on the lower level and start at the higher. Worry about how the coverups at the developing areas of the military costs more than anything else. Or the delayed contracts (look into the Osprey or the F-35 or the new Marine AAV). Crack down on that and that is were you can save money. The original reason for the digital (and I heard this during some of the pilot programs) was that it broke up some of the digital optics used to spot troops from a distance, at night, and thermal. I will say that some of it worked. The old Pattern was also being used by 80% of foreign militaries. I do agree that there is waste in the uniform department. I mean the clothing is digital design but the vehicles would be solid color or the old tri-color. Also remember that the individual has to carry his uniforms so the more designs the more he has to carry. Woodland and Desert are the best “basics”.