Just When You Thought the Army’s Uniform Games Had Ended . . .
. . . it turns out that’s not the case.
According to the Army Times, the Army has announced that, because of adoption of the new Operational Camouflage Pattern, additional new uniform items will be required. Specifically, soldiers will need new boots, t-shirts, and belts to go with the new camouflage uniforms.
Now, maybe new boots make sense; the desert tan boots used with the ACU were somewhat lighter than the new OCP. The new boots are coyote brown.
But new T-shirts and belts are just stupid, at least if they’re going to be mass-issued gratis. What, has RIT quit making freaking dye? And a new belt? C’mon, folks – the belt isn’t even freaking visible. The only time it’s seen is when you take off the jacket. And if you’re taking off the jacket in combat, well, I think that means you’ve got worse problems than a mismatched belt.
But I guess the DA part of the Five-Sided Asylum had to find something for some of its staff to work on. This must have been really important.
The Army Times article has more details. It’s worth reading – unless you are having high blood pressure problems today. Then maybe you might want to wait a while.
One of those details: the new OCP isn’t designed to be “universal”. Jungle and desert variants will soon be announced. I bet at least one of those will need “new boots, t-shirts, and belts” too.
Sheesh. GMAFB.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Big Army, Dumbass Bullshit
Guess a few GOs are nearing retirement & just greasing the skids into a second career. I liked the one in the late 90’s where soldiers had to buy new dress greens to replace same looking old greens…there was like a half shade almost imperceptible difference in color. Only a few short years later big army chucks the greens for the blues.
IF I’m still around for the next round of uniform roulette, I’ll be taking my boots to the cobbler to get dyed. Danner Matterhorns are bit pricey to replace and after 8 years, they’re still in great shape. T-shirts look green and I still have a metric buttload of green t-shirts from BDU days, so I’m good! Screw the new belt though.
I’m waiting for the Navy come out with orange aquaflage — just in case anyone goes overboard.
Well, they could just buy some orange prison jumpsuits instead . . . .
(smiles, ducks – and runs for cover)
DUCK… and COVER!
Classroom “battle drill.” 
Hey Hondo is right. In fact with gtmo closed like Barry promised, there should be Plenty of them in stock.
Oh wait, it’s still open. But wait, Barry keeps releasing more terrorists back into the fight. Still plenty to go around. Pheww, close one.
I reach into my bag of scathing repartees, and come up empty. So I’ll fall back on the tried and true, “ESABATM, Doggie”
And I mean that in the nicest way. 🙂
The Navy will no doubt, rather than issue orange aquaflage, simply require that all Sailors carry a dye pack in their pocket at all times.
The orange pattern will end up going on the inside of the NWU.
AGAIN!!??
Blech … Big Army … sigh …
Maybe I should have held on to my BDU’s? One more round of GO’s and they’ll be back in! Some uniform manufacturer has the right pols and bureaucrats bribed properly!
At least you people didn’t have to put up with this abortion…
Yes it was real…..(well proposed) the Air Force Billy Mitchell heritage coat.
http://cfile22.uf.tistory.com/image/0329F442512878CC0F0482
Thank god I retired and it is still only.on the drawing board but I’ll give it this it look military and not like a business suite.thanks gen mcpeak….
Agreed. It also looks better to me (disclaimer: I’m Army, not USAF) than the mid/late 1990s “Delta is ready when you are” uniform variant that the USAF briefly adopted – I believe also under Gen McPeak.
Same uniform as the current one Hondo, (at least on the enlisted side), they just scrapped the Rank on the officer sleeve nonsense when McPeak left.
Didn’t the newest version add epaulet straps, at least on the officer version?
Yes, the O version has epaulets. Both still look and feel like a cheap polyester business suit. As much as I am tired of uniform changes, I wish the AF service dress had a stripe down the side of the trousers or service stripes on the sleeves….something to make your average person say “oh, must be a military uniform.”
McPeak didn’t want it to look like a “military” uniform. He was after the “Casual RAF” look, I think.
I always believed McPeak wanted to be in the Navy …
McFreak wanted to be something… I’m not sure what, though.
I mentioned before a friend of mine who was a lieutenant colonel in the AF Reserve when this abortion came out. He immediately put in for retirement, saying he wasn’t going to wear that uniform and, “if I want to look like I work for Delta Air Lines, I’ll go to work for Delta Air Lines.”
Chip, you could at least post a SPEW warning!
Is it just me, or does that uniform bear an uncanny resemblance to the male USMC Dress Blues?
I wonder if the cancellation had anything to do with a bunch of angry Marines threatening to open up a can of kick-butt on the USAF if they even THOUGHT of making their uniforms in the USMC style? We will probably never know…but doesn’t it sound plausible? ;o)
Yeah. It’s so cute, aint it?
The USAF wants to look like USMC.
I did notice though that the people posing in the new duds have no clue how to run a straight gig line.
Darth Vader’s gig line is squared away,though.(Think mind control neck choke if you try to correct Darth Vader).
Not really. It looks just as much like an Army Air Service uniform from after World War I. Here’s a picture of BG Billy Mitchell, US Army Air Service, probably in the early 1920s:
Here’s a direct link if the picture doesn’t display properly above:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Billy_Mitchell.jpg
His was old-school OD, though. Personally, I always thought the Army should go back to the style of the ’40s for its dress uniforms. They just looked sharp back then.
The best uniform ever was the officer Pinks and Greens of the late 40’s early 50’s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Generals_Anton;_Eisenhower;_Carl_Spaatz;_Jimmy_Doolittle,_CO_8th_Air_Force;_Gen._William_Kepner,_CO,_8th_AF_Fighter_Command,_Col._Don_Blakeslee.Debden_April_1944.JPG
Concur.
Can’t argue – except for the shoes (never did think much of brown shoes as military dress footwear).
For all their faults, I also thought the Class A greens were pretty decent looking – just not quite as good as “Pinks and Greens”.
You’re not referring to the guy in black on the left, are you, ChipNASA?
This will be my 6th type of fatigues worn since i joined the army. I’m getting pretty tired of spending money of my own on this crap.
We can’t afford to keep personnel in the army till they hit 20, but we have money to issue 4 sets of fatigues, with accoutrements, to everyone every 5 years….
What, no replacement for the socks? C’mon, the green socks should be forsaken for the Coyote Brown ones issued to the Marines. While we’re at it, no mention of replacing the current “tan Superman” (guess that’s the proper terminology, when I came in we had “brown Supermen”) underwear? We can’t clash with our uniforms while getting dressed.
With two other variants in the works and seven years before retirement, it is entirely possible that I’ll end up wearing 6 or 7 different combat uniforms during my career–BDU, DCU, ACU-UCP, ACU-OCP (Multicam), new OCP, new Jungle, new Desert… Throw in TOG Blues, Class A’s, ASU, IPFU, APFU (mandatory in less than three years), and CinC Guard (Wig and Tights), and my closet will look like a veritable surplus store!
The Army did change to black socks for awhile. And back to green.
Have a yard sale.
Just think of the cash you could rake in from overcharging Airsoftees and SVfakers.
Did you ever get the FR-ACU(UCP)? That was our Iraq uniform…
Never did get those, was in Iraq in 2003 and spent late ’04 to early ’12 in TOG and USAREC.
“In another potential cost-saving measure, the Army plans to retain wearable items in the Universal Camouflage Pattern and dye them coyote brown.”
So they are going to save all the unworn ACUs and dye them brown. lol That’s awesome….
Does kinda raise the question of why the same can’t be arranged locally for the troops’ existing ACUs, doesn’t it?
These all look very ‘Marine-ish’ in color. Especially the boots; but I know Marine boots have GaE on them.
Sounds like some folks in the Pentagon have relatives or stock in the uniform companies. Doesn’t make sense to me but hey, what does from these clowns. This will mean more uniforms in surplus stores for the phonies to choose from.
What Marisa Tomei and I think of the new and improved camouflage:
“My opening statement…uhhhh…everyt’ing dat guy jus’ said is bullshit. Thank you.”
All I can think of is that part of good morning vietnam where he impersonates a fashion designer.
“If you’re going to fight, CLASH”
You mean this?
I could have sworn Mom(congress) took the US Army’s credit card and ability to play fashion designer away from them a year ago.
Can we start firing these idoits?
Congress took away the ability of the services to create “new uniforms” a couple years back.
However, Multi-Cam and the variant they are using for this now were “technically” in the Army’s inventory already. So, echelons above reality used the loophole to identify this as the primary service uniform.
I think it would’ve just been cheaper to go with straight OCP / Multi-Cam that we already have in stock and troops are getting for OEF. But I’m a lowly E-8 so I don’t know anything.
Its’s funny to me that while i got off of Active duty USMC in 1991, i was able to wear my USMC uniforms for my first few drills when i joined the Guard in 2001. The EGA on the pocket was faded enough that no one in the guard noticed or said anything, i just had to get name tapes sewn on.
From 2001 till i was retired from AD Army, i have had a total of 5 uniforms (including the old style BDU) and the only one that was worth its salt was the initial issue of DCU’s in 2003 for Iraq. 5 tours and 5 uniforms… seems kind of stupid to me to be wasting so much money on this crap when i could have used say more ammo, frags or even some of those low tech drones that were worth gold.
Just my 2 cents for today….
Funny enough, I agree with you. My old BDUs, ACUs, OCP are all faded and worn out too.
My 4 sets of DCUs from my tour in Iraq ’05 are all in decent shape, they survived fantastically. Meanwhile, the rest of the peeps in my unit had ACUs and had to have them replaced even while we were still in country once, then got issued new sets after we got back.
Ive always felt that if the Army wants to set itself apart from the other branches and other nations, there is just one word……”Stetson”.
Oh, HELL no!!
Excuse my French, but leave the cowboy hats to the Cav.
I knew I should have gone into fashion merchandising…how much taxpayer $$ is this going to cost? For fuck sake…
As of last Monday, I officially MR. PavePusher, so I don’t have to self-censor any more. (You’ve been warned.)
The uniform boards of ALL the services need to be gathered into a warehouse, then run through an industrial chipper (set on SLOW) feet-first. All lovingly video’d, with special care taken for audio quality.
The resulting movie gets played to the NEW COMBINED uniform board convened a week later.
Can’t possibly make things any worse.
YES.
Oh, WTWO?! The tan t-shirt, boots and belt were good enough for OCP over in Afghanistan!
Damn typo… WTFO, I mean
Why is the army going with Scorpion w2 when it is only a runner up to Multicam? They obviously thought Multicam was the best choice in the first place….at least until they wanted to save money and go with the second choice scorpion. Are our troops getting short changed because the army wants to save money to make up for te money they wasted on the grey UCP?