The really important stuff
Yeah, all of this talk about 4,000 troops going to fight Ebola in Africa, a few thousand more to fight back ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the troops involved in Somalia, the Pentagon hiking healthcare costs, and the White House trying to cut the troops’ pay raise…can we get back to the really important issues. Please.
Stuff like camouflage patterns;
The U.S. Army will soon replace its digital, Universal Camouflage Pattern, but soldiers may still be wearing the service’s Afghanistan pattern for many years into the future.
The Army’s recent decision to authorize the 75th Ranger Regiment to wear MultiCam in garrison has triggered questions about the pattern’s future as the service prepares to transition to its new Operational Camouflage Pattern in 2015.
The new OCP is very similar to MultiCam, a pattern made by Crye Precision that the Army adopted for use in Afghanistan in 2010.
It’s similar to MultiCam because Crye developed the pattern with the Army for its Objective Force Warrior program in 2002. He later made small adjustments to the pattern for trademark purposes and called it MultiCam.
Yeah, I don’t even know what they’re talking about anymore, and I don’t think that they do either. Me? I know that “uniform” is supposed to mean that we’ll all look alike, but whichever group of stars and bars is leading this charge has lost sight of that simple concept. Whatever. The problem can solved by cutting the troops pay and throwing that money at stupid self-perpetuating projects like this.
Category: Big Army
*Meanwhile, back in the Marine Corps*
“How many freaking sets of Green digi am I supposed to have? Well, then how many desert do I need? Can’t we just go back to ONE FREAKING PATTERN?!”
I am required to maintain 3 sets of Green digi and 2 sets of desert.
This is the sort of stuff that prompted me, in part, to take a month or so off from visiting tAH and the daily news. It is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo infuriating. That’s all I have, lest I allow the monster in me to take over. (I’m sure Chip has an appropriate video for monsters of some sort.)
Well they have to stay preoccupied or else people are going to start asking why they are sitting on their berghdal findings for months.
This.
Well, prior to 1984 on HAAF, if you saw someone wearing the OD green ripstop cotton fatigues, better known as Vietnam jungle fatigues, along with the jungle boots, it was because they were in the 1/75 Rangers. No one else was authorized to wear them, until they decided that those of us in very warm weather climates could, in 1984.
If I remember right you could buy them in clothing sales for about $20.00 a set. I also remember wearing the old ODs into 1985, I think.
Ah, those were the days of starch, ironed creases and spit shined jump boots.
lol, Old Trooper, when I left Ft Stupid to go to Germany, I did a self inventory of the military cloths I had and suddenly realized after 3 years there, I had six sets of summer weights, and one set of winters. “Very warm climates” indeed.
yet at Ft. Bliss in ’85 I had two sets of jungle fatigues and six sets of BDUs, one of the worst hot-weather uniforms ever.
@TacticalTrunkMonkey-cry me a river.
old school had to manintain Summer and Winter Alphas. In the grunts….. j/k
but now I have a closet full of ACUs and a couple of footlockers full of woodland and desert utilities
In my 5 years of Army National Guard time, and my 2 years of USMC (before we got the digi) I had to maintain the same amount of uniforms…
Just sayin’, I wished we could pick ONE pattern and stick with it. I like the Multi-cam myself…
Yea, the good ol days when we had a choice, OD Greeen, OD Green or OD Green.
Richard Jacobs…Ah yes. The good ole days when we all looked alike in our pickle suits. “Thanks For The Memories” I think is how the old song goes.
Although my opinion rarely mattered then (and even less now) I was always a fan of wearing plain ole fatigues in garrison and saving my expensive hide and go seek uniforms for the field. In virtually every unit I was in, only the mechs got coveralls so the rest of us ruined many a good uniform in the motorpool as well as elsewhere. I finally took to hitting surplus stores to buy uniforms at a quarter the cost of what Clothing Sales offered, and usually in pretty good shape.
I don’t know how most of you can keep up with the changes and costs nowadays.
Gee, I think I’ve heard someone else say the same before . . . multiple times. (smile)
What on earth was wrong with cotton chambray shirts and cotton/denim dungarees? They all looked alike, and they still couldn’t see you if you fell overboard, because it was all blue.
Aquaflage?
I wonder if this latest US Army uniform boondoggle is just politicians rewarding their fatcat donors with Government Contracts, how many truckloads of money have been dumped into the R & D on these so far?
Does anyone else remember that time where there was one pattern shared by all of the services?
I had an old crusty, country Platoon Sergeant back in the day get angry because we were not all the same in formation. Some of us were wearing gloves, rain gear and some not. He said, “UNI-form. UNI meaning ‘one’ and form meaning ‘form’. UNI-form”. I laughed.
had a friend who used to say “Unique” from the two old Latin words, Unus, meaning one, and Equus, meaning horse. Used asin “This is a unique town.”
Proud Infidel – wonder no more. Of COURSE it’s all to line corporate and post-retirement pockets!
Why there needs to be cammo in the first place is beyond me. The old OD fatigues worked on many levels. They were well-made, wore like iron, and after 2-3 days in the field came to blend in nicely with whatever environment you were operating in.
It was a nice, simple system that worked. Same thing, as Ex-PH2 points out, with the Navy’s work uniform. The light blue shirt and dark blue denim bell bottoms were the most useful uniform I was ever issued. Not only wore well, but looked good, and everyone knew you were a sailor. Now, with the aquaflage sets, our Navy looks more like State Police SWAT team members than sailors.
All of this foolishness needs to stop.
But… But…
I like OCP…
Just to say though, we are spending too much on it. How hard can it be to do this?
From pictures my dad looked spiffy in his khakis with the scarf as he spent his time deterring Communist aggression from the north of the 38th parallel. In my day (in the ’90s), I asked my 1st Sgt. in a training meeting (my sergeant was trying to get some work done) if we should go back to khakis. His reply was an emphatic “NO!”.
And we weren’t a motor unit, but we had enough money to buy coveralls (warm weather and cold as I recall) for all; but my sergeant said we had too much money.
CCO. Those khakis felt like canvas. That’s why they seemed never to wrinkle. Only masochists put starch in them.
Canvas–ouch. In most of my dad’s pictures from Korea he is in fatigues.
Woodland BDU … Way to go!