Afghan uniform dust-up
The USAToday reports that Congress is criticizing the Pentagon for buying a woodland pattern uniform for our Afghan allies;
The Pentagon wasted as much as $28 million over the past decade buying uniforms for the Afghan army with a woodland camouflage pattern appropriate for a tiny fraction of that war-torn country, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
The Afghan Defense Minister picked the pricey, privately owned “forest” color pattern over free camouflage schemes owned by the U.S. government, according to an advance copy of the report due out on Wednesday. The scathing, 17-page study notes that “forests cover only 2.1% of Afghanistan’s total land area.”
The Daily Caller quotes camouflage expert, Senator Claire McCaskill;
Members of Congress from both parties want the Pentagon to answer for purchasing camouflage for Afghan forces that is the wrong pattern for the region.
Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill voiced her frustration over the potential waste of $28 million in a letter to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), USA Today reports.
“This is a contracting decision that makes you smack your head in frustration,” McCaskill said in a statement. “It’s a prime example of wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of how this happened.”
Personally, I’m sick and tired of all of this talk about an “effective” camouflage pattern. When I invaded Iraq in 1991, I was wearing woodland pattern BDUs because we only had one set of desert pattern uniforms and mine was dirty – it really didn’t matter what color, or pattern, uniform I had anyway. Within ten seconds of putting my uniform on and rolling around in the terrain, my uniform matched my surroundings.
I don’t give a tiny rat’s ass what those pointy-headed people at Natick say, a camouflage pattern is no more than a fashion statement – it doesn’t protect anyone, it doesn’t make you magically invisible, it’s covered with dirt and mud as soon as you take cover, so it doesn’t really matter. Anyone who says otherwise has never spent a moment as a real soldier.
From the Washington Post;
The report said that the then-Afghan defense minister picked the uniform because he liked its aesthetics and the Pentagon supported the decision with little oversight, wasting millions over a 10-year period because of the camouflage’s “proprietary status” and the fact that the U.S. military could have provided less complicated uniforms at a significantly cheaper cost.
Aesthetics is all that matters for uniforms, if anything ever really counts. For decades we wore the old OD green single-color fatigues, in combat and in the messhall on KP. They were cheap (I think a set cost $12) and durable and then the VOLAR (Volunteer Army) decided that we needed permanent press fatigues. Those of us in some infantry units wore camouflaged uniforms for the field and then everyone wanted cool camo – even pregos needed camo. Now, its a topic of discussion in unit meetings and in the halls of Congress because everyone wants to give input on fashion.
Here’s an idea, pay as much attention to winning the war against terror as you put towards fashion and tattoos.
Category: Congress sucks
Mud. Nature’s camo.
It worked in Rambo so it’s *GOT* to be true, right?!?!
It worked in “Predator,” too! Does that make it a double-blind study?
Mud. So good even alien prize hunters can’t see you in it.
Another perfect example of why we need TERM LIMITS!!
Just send them these.
I mean, goats have rights too.
http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/84500/New-Gay-Army-Uniform-84900.jpg
Oh shame on you Chip…
A Colonel, with jump wings with a combat star, chopper pin and something that looks upside down, makeup, pink earrings etc. etc. etc…
Don’t tell me, let me guess he/she/it is wearing all that shit to honor the real Veterans out there…
Shame on you…
Boy George, is that you? Didn’t know you served…
When the armchair warriors have a vote…
Was there anything actually wrong with the old OD greens?
No. In fact, they probably are as close to ‘universal’ as you can get it. At least, in my opinion.
Which OD greens? The original 1960’s cotton utility fatigue uni? I vote for the OD jungle fatigues. Wore them in Ranger school and RVN. They looked good lightly starched and pressed, or not, for the field. I hated the gas station attendant stay pressed fatigues. I liked the cammy jungle fatigues, too. Still have a set.
I always liked the 60’s cotton ODs for summer/hot environs.
Wet and in the cold? Not so much.
There is hunting camo that is more effective than this contracted patterning crap. I could hide in Jonn Lilyea’s front yard in it, and scare the crap out of the deer that visit him to get his apples.
Not expensive, either, but very effective.
The other choices is pink camo.
I kinda like the idea of you hiding in Jonn’s front yard. I’ve been hiding in the woods behind his house for years and he ain’t caught me yet.
Now I wonder who else is hiding around there?
If you can’t see, I ain’t tellin’.
He just thinks that’s a bush out in front of his house. But he still doesn’t know who’s been stealing the butter and the sliced ham out of the fridge, or why there is always the scent of roasting hot dogs drifting in through his back door.
Does it rustle?
Any one of these hunting patterns would be more effective in Afghanistan than anything an overcharging military contractor could produce.
The first pattern (Rana) was developed by a Navy SEAL. It would work quite well in Afghanistan’s rather dusty, mottled environs.
http://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/hunting/2016/06/5-new-hunting-camo-patterns-plus-our-camo-survey-results#page-2
You are hiding in Jonn’s yard? Let us know if a certain “trail assassin” shows up.
He said he “cometh” many moons ago.
How did I miss this opportunity?
Dazed-&-witless ‘comethed’ when he fell off that curb in Florida and got busted for sleeping drunk in the street, didn’t he?
The Afghans will be happy to have a uniform. That matches too.
The main Afghan uniform is jungle BDU. But there are literally dozens of official uniforms depending on the unit and who is training them.
There are so many real problems in Afghanistan that this is a big nothing burger.
Yeah, but WE are the people paying for the nothing burger, Sport.
And PS.
When the American Army wore the HATED ACUs…
We were jealous of the Afghans.
As a taxpayer, I always wondered what led the Army to think that the battlefield of tomorrow would be a gravel pit…or a gray Victorian couch.
There were senior officers who had stock in gravel pits and fabric companies with too much gray victorian couch pattern. They also expected golden parachutes from the same and got them, so we got ACUs…..
I liked the OD uniform… After 5 minutes in a tank or APC you blended in with all the hydraulic fluid, oil, and fuel stains that goes along with being an armored soldier.
Played hell on inspection days though, since you always had to remember to keep one unstained set available. From all the horror stories Ive heard about CH-47’s spoutin’ hydraulic fluid, Im pretty much surprised the flight crew just didn’t pre-dip their uniforms so they ended up with a uniform stain…
What the hell are we buying uniforms for the afghan army for in the first place??? Surely they must have some redcoats laying around somewhere… or maybe khaki if they want to pretend to have made it to the 20th century?
They had the green permanent pressed fatigues when I came in in 1980 and I hated them. Keeping the gig line straight was a PITA and you really couldn’t carry anything in your pockets. The cap had a leather sweat band that got nasty in the Georgia heat and humidity.
I agree with Jonn 100% on the silliness of the “camo wars” though. Make a modern uniform in plain ol’ OD green and it will work in just about any environment. The problem, as is often the case with military procurement, is that congressmen and businesses get those cartoon $$ in their eyes whenever they think of any new piece of equipment for the military, and it becomes basically just another excuse to pick the taxpayers pockets and say you’re doing it for the good of the country.
If I was the emperor of the country our field uniforms would basically be hot weather BDU’s in an OD green color, or basically a somewhat more rugged version of the Vietnam-era jungle uniforms.
I’d disagree. The old “pickle suit” was IMO a good garrison uniform. If it’s biggest problem was the “gig line”, that’s not too bad.
I always thought the best solution would have been to keep those, then issue individuals in tactical units 4 sets of field uniforms in camouflage pattern appropriate for the unit’s local training area thru CIF – for non-Army types, that’s the installation’s field gear issue point. You deploy to somewhere requiring a different camouflage pattern, you DX your existing camouflage uniforms on a 1-for-1 basis. You turn them in (or pay for them) on PCS or ETS.
We’d only really need 4 or 5 types of camouflage to cover virtually all of the world: woodland, jungle, desert, Arctic, and (maybe) grassland.
Barring that, Jonn’s IMO pretty much right. No one size fits all solution works worth a damn for camouflage. If we’re going to do that, then we might as well go back to plain OD and smear local mud/dirt/dust on them as required.
For that matter, Hondo, what’s wrong with regular old buttons? Why the insistence on zippers and velcro (or hook & loop, whatever)? I know from personal experience that velcro wears out from use after a relatively short period of time, and that’s without even getting into the issue of dirt and debris getting stuck in it. Buttons are cheap, buttons breathe, buttons give range of motion, and buttons can be sewn back on with minimal skill. Is there a particular reason why they’ve fallen out of favor?
TOW: yeah! I’m glad Velcro wasn’t on any of my uniforms as it is enough of a pain on civvies. Velcro: a modern day way of alerting the enemy to your presence.
Additionally I want the WWI button up boots to come back; great for developing toughness via blisters, trench foot, and frostbite.
Velcro is from the devil.
I’m pretty sure that buttons would dig into your chest while wearing body armor. When wearing body armor I always left the zipper all the way down and used just the Velcro for just that reason.
The Army ditched Velcro and went back to buttons and zippers for the new OCPs.
Yeah, I hated it. But I was a BIG fan of the BDU. True, the early versions with the too-short jackets and “Elvis” collars didn’t look too good but by the late 1980’s the uniform was just about perfect: It was sharp enough to look good in garrison, functional in the field, reasonably priced and best of all, COMFORTABLE in nearly all environments.
The fact that all 4 services used the same field uniform for over 20 years should be telling. The Marines started the silliness in 2003 with their MarPat uniform and with all the $$ released to the military to fight the GWOT, the other three services went full-retard on uniforms, too.
I agree 100% with you. I wore the Vietnam-era OD ripstop jungle fatigues when we were out in the field in HI in the late 70’s, and they were the best field uniforms I ever wore.
As for the Afghans, the Afghan Government forces during the Soviet-Afghan War wore plain brownish-green fatigues (no doubt supplied by the Soviets). If it was good enough for the Afghan government forces then, it should be good enough for them now. We should have just supplied them with plain OD green fatigues and save ourselves some money and call it even and move on to something else…
You hafta realize the macho variable when dealing with Afghan and Iraqi military and police. Even if they don’t actually fight well in the new patterns, the cool guy angle trumps everything else. All we need to complete their perfect look is to issue them all a couple of sets of Oakleys and some colorful insignificant patches. They can’t fight for shit, but man do they look badass, and that’s all that counts. It’s like the movie Tropic Thunder, but for real :).
Even in the early 90s, the most common question asked at Basic Training to Drill Sergeants, “Drill Sergeant, why do we have all these pockets if we aren’t allowed to use them?”
Now after 9/11 we have even more pockets and they are getting stuffed with all kinds of stupid crap, “just in case!”, even in garrison.
This will help with friend or foe id when the inevitable happens.
Whatcha wanna bet the mullah-cluckers will be selling them right and left so they can buy some more boys?
Personally, i found the Issue camouflage ( c 1985) was perfect for the places i had to go. if fit in Nicely for training in CLNC, Philippines, Thailand and Okinawa. The desert uniforms were an almost perfect match for Kuwait in 1991 ( i do think the DCU issued for OIF was a a better fit in Iraq though)
The ACU’s are useless anywhere there is not Lichen covered rock or corn fields. I just gave away 27 new, unworn sets i had accumulated to my local PD, they will use them for Simunition training
For my self thee days i use the old WW-II USMC reversible uniform for woods ( green side out) and crop fields ( tan side out) that have been harvested. for fall Bow (Deer and Turkey) i use an old surplus Danish rig that i got when i was 15 ( its a bit tighter around the belly these days, it must have shrunk)
Patterns do matter, but not in the way that the Army, Navy and AirForce have been thinking. i believe the standard USMC desert and woodland patterns should be adopted DOD wide because they work, and that is what really matters.
I have a couple pics of teammates, at 10′ to 15′, in camo uniform whom you can barely see in the foliage of Nam. IMO camo works only under the proper conditions: 1) high foliage/rocks (camo matching the conditions such as Nam conditions or the sand box conditions or artic conditions) or 2)you are laying on the ground in the matching camo conditions. Walking across open conditions I felt like a neon sign and as anyone who has been there done that knows that open conditions suck no matter what you are wearing.
I read someplace that camo use in Nam was limited to only a few units such as recon. Anyone know if this is fact?
My Navy’s switch to blue/white camo just made me cringe. No doubt, none of the people who choose uniforms these days ever served in combat.
That Navy camo always looked purple to me….
The type II (Digi Brown like MARPAT) and type III (Digi Green will be Navy Ground and Shore uniform in Oct 2018)were designed and tested by NSW and NECC commands that have real war fighters. The NWU II and III were tested by real deal SEAL teams and other ground forces for over 10 years before being brought on line.
I agree with your assessment that the cammy jungle fatigues were very effective in RVN. The camo fatigues were issued only to recon units in the army. In the Americal they disliked them so much we were forbidden to wear them outside our company area in Chu Lai. However after my company moved to Da Nang, we were allowed to wear them anywhere. So they became the uniform of the day for my unit. (I still had to change to regular jungle fatigues when I went back to Chu Lai.) We inherited dozens of sets from your 1st Recon Bn, Grimmy, along with about a hundred Kbars.
Kind of why the Navy spent hundreds of millions or more to make squids show up in “aquaflage” and barely 6-7 years later, abandon it.
Oh, and nevermind the fact it would melt if exposed to flame or high temps.
It looked real good on those Navy chicks at Bethesda, though.
And good thing for when they went to sea, which was, uh, never.
Pictures Jonn, Pictures. You can’t drop a claim like that and not show us pictures…
“Oh, and never mind the fact it would melt if exposed to flame or high temps”
Seriously? Good Lord. Shipboard fires are serious business that the Nav takes seriously. What? the uniform selectors presumed the firefighters would all undress and get into fireproof clothing? The aquaflage was dumb, dumb, dumb. Approving meltable clothing should bring someone up on charges. Any word on how this escaped the Navy’s attention?
Way back in the day, the fire department I work for expected its firefighters to wear a long-sleeve polyester uniform shirt as their wildland fire PPE. Then one day in 1973, an 18-year-old Firefighter-1’s shirt melted onto him. He died in the burn unit a few weeks later. Specks of melted polyester can still be found on the rock he collapsed upon today (I’ve seen them).
So while the Navy’s uniform is frustratingly stupid, it’s sadly not without precedent.
ISYN…I Shit You Not.
Which is why we had poop suits underway on the boat. Not only more comfortable but fire retardant. And even inport, woe be unto the blueshirt in the duty section or doing maintenance, even when the plant was shutdown.
25 years later, you won’t catch me in an electrical panel or other equipment without FR on.
They could have just done what the Army did when they switched from ACU to FRACU in theater – wasted more millions just to completely replace both several years later.
I’ve never understand Navy camo on anything but a SEAL or other in the field, warfare types. I mean, it just doesn’t “blend” into anything and actually sticks out like a sore thumb. Why the need to blend into a ship?
One question I’ve has slowly rise from the murk of my brain:
If we had just given the Afghans some of our uniforms, what problems would that give us in identifying at a reasonable distance US from Afghan troops?
Just wondering…
Got nuthin’.
Silly squid, you’re supposed to be hard to find in the water.
Like when you go overboard.
All the better to hide from the sharks, GB!
*grin*
Claire McCaskill…she’s crying about $25 million? She wipes her ass with more than that before breakfast, the crooked bitch.
http://soldiersystems.net/2017/06/22/28-million-well-spent-a-critique-of-the-sigar-report-on-afghanistan-national-army-camouflage-uniforms/
I always like it when I was in a Bradley supporting an armor battalion and my battery commander wanted me to wear woodland face paint at the NTC. The Army was always good for stuff like that.
NTC as in Fort Irwin? In the desert? 165 miles from the nearest (dead) vegetation?
If that’s not government efficiency, I don’t know what could be.
Late reports are that Mattis is involved and unhappy with this, too.
I don’t recall these pols making an issue of this AT ALL during the eight years of the previous administration, why the sudden kerfluffle? Is this going to suddenly be President Trump’s fault?
It’s McCaskill – anything to get attention and to demean or rag on the military. To my amazement, I had to agree with her this one time even though I know her motives are less than pure. A good camouflage for her would be poop brown and vomit green.
The ACU pattern was crap and the only environment it matched was the gravel parking lot outside building 4 on Ft. Benning.
Not all patterns will match their environment when dirty. The ACU had an obnoxious history of being easily spotted.
When they first announced the new pattern I saw it on the internet. I thought for sure my monitor had a color accuracy issue because the pattern was reported to be a “sage green” and a tan. I saw a uniform that was grey and almost white.
The first time I ever saw an ACU pattern in the field was when I was approaching a patrol that had set a perimeter at Camp Mackall. One soldier in the patrol was wearing ACU and I saw him from 100 meters out. It was not until I was within 25 meters that I spotted the rest of the patrol.
I knew immediately it was a shit pattern and that something deeply wrong and likely corrupt led to its adoption. I still cannot stand the sight of the pattern. Worthless crap that should never have been adopted.
Given that the forest pattern was being offered to the Afghans at a time when soldiers in Afghanistan were still deploying in ACUs I am not surprised the Afghans chose not to choose one of the patterns owned by the Army.
And this news story is a pretty petty thing for those critical of the pentagon to be latching on to. The difference in patterns would have saved the government a negligible amount of money given the cost of the war.
We probably spent more on soccer balls.
Gotta agree, $28M USD isn’t even a rounding error at the five sided wind tunnel. More like chump change.
Or San Fran Nan’s booze bill when she was flying a private 757 to and from CA every weekend.
You’d think she could have at least hitched a ride with Leon Panetta, but nooooooooo….
Reality is uniforms are only for identifying friendly forces. Democraps only get outraged about military spending because they view that as money wasted when it could have been wasted on their social spending.
CP Multi kicks ass. It has made a difference more than once. Not all camo is created equal. My $.02.
Just hand them out to all of the Substandard Discharged Vets that show up at your next local “stand down”.
Maybe sell them a raffle ticket too boot.
Camouflage uniform? Pffft!!
Don’t matter what you where underneath when you have to drive into battle in a big loud noisy clanky thing wearing a brown MOPP suit.
That’s the uniform to issue to our so called “allies.”
Probably millions of them still on hand in that Area 51 warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant and that engine that runs on water are stored.
The Ark and the Roswell UFO are both in a huge secret bunker on the Fort Huachuca east range. Area 51 is just an elaborate distraction.
Ah, I see now. Is that 200 MPG carburetor also there at Fort Hootchy-Kootchy?
I gotta get me one of those.
Is it true that all the bunker guards there are third award CIB recipients? Hence the need for the Clothing Sales store to stock at least 700 of them and that they sell at a rate of 7-10 per day./smile
I wrote this a few years ago when the US Congressmen were bitching to the press about how much money the US military was spending on combat uniforms. This was a little slight of hand, you see, considering the amount of pork spent compared to the paltry sum spent on military uniforms. Might be a long read for the format here, but here it goes: ***************** This is something I ginned up because it has been a topic of conversation here in recent days. Since I had done some research to make my point I put it all in an email to send out to those with whom I have these sorts of conversations. It is political in nature, but war is the continuation of politics by other means, yes? (Thank you Clausewitz.) This is how stupid things get done over and over in the government. The main problem is that there is no incentive for politicians to fix problems. The “power” that politicians have is in the ability to spend money. There are a few people on the Republican side that are true ideologues like Rand Paul that truly believe in reducing the amount of money in government, but they are few and far between. All Pols get power by being able to spend money – regardless of political affiliation. You will notice that the average budget during the last 6 years of Clinton was 1.7 T (yes, as in TRILLION) and the 8 years of Bush 43 averaged 2.55 T. Of course, the trick of it is that Pols have to make it look like they give a damn about reducing the deficit (because even dullards know you can’t just spend money you don’t have forever) without actually significantly reducing the money/power they have to wield. One way of doing this is taking advantage of the fact that most Americans are so ill-educated that they can’t even take in the concept of TRILLIONS of anything. As a matter of fact, a trillion is a lot take in even if you are the kind of person that doesn’t give… Read more »
That was written in 2013 and it seems more clear than ever that politicians really DON’T want to cut back spending in any way, shape or form. The only solution? Vote their dumb asses out!
Speaking of uniform fiascoes, am I the only one who thinks it’s funny that the Army went through all that crap to get the ACU, then 10 years later went to the “OCP” (i.e. “multi-cam”)
Which, from about 30′ away, is virtually indistinguishable from the old Woodland BDU pattern?
Seriously, look at the uniforms from a distance. I know the materials are different (i.e. heavier and more expensive) and I know th ‘cut’ is different (again, more complicated and much more expensive) but the camo pattern when seen from a distance is startlingly similar: Green dominant with hints of brown and black.
I think it just goes to show that for all its apparent shortcomings, the BDU was a pretty decent uniform.
The only two field uniforms I wore were the OG-107 utility uniform, cotton sateen (fatigues), and jungle fatigues. I vastly preferred the jungle fatigues (Except for the point of issue). The OG-107s were crap in the field; hot in the summer, pockets were unusable, and they didn’t hold up well. I made the mistake of wearing a set of them in RVN when coming back from R&R because I thought it would be fun. Horrible experience.
Jungle fatigues fit more comfortably, have more useful pockets, have buttons that work better, and dry more quickly. They also hold up better as long as you don’t wear them for more than a month or so. Then they start to rot and fall apart.
Then there was the issue “baseball cap” style fatigue cap that went with the OG-107s. A true POS hated by everyone. They would attract grease from 20 yards.
As far as our Afghan “allies” go, I don’t care what they wear as long as our guys can keep an eye on them.
Speaking of camouflage patterns, I read somewhere that cammo patterns are only better when not moving; a solid color was less visible when moving. Seems right to me.