Navy changes uniform again
Stars & Stripes reports that the US Navy is changing their duty uniform again from the aqua-flage we’ve all come to love to a more traditional camouflage;
A two-year rollout should put the green, pixelated, camouflage work uniforms — called the Navy Working Uniform Type III — in every sailor’s wardrobe by October 2019, the message said. They’re replacing blue outfits — nicknamed blueberries — that have been the Navy’s only authorized work uniform since July 2010.
The first sailors to get the new uniforms will be at the Navy’s Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill., at Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I., and in the Southwest Region, the Navy said in its message.
The old gear is being phased out partly because of sailors’ complaints, former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus said last summer. Sailors have panned the blue outfits as uncomfortable, heavy and a fire hazard.
Yeah, well, whatever. Who actually cares that the Navy has a camouflage uniform – they ride boats, big gray looming targets. I get that camouflage is cool-looking, but what a waste of taxpayer dollars. If anyone could pull off the old cotton OD green fatigues (which cost about $13/set) it’s the Navy.
Category: Navy
Its a good thing we keep changing uniforms every couple years since we have all this extra money in the budget to buy them….
Anything that comes from Mabus is designed to hurt America.
Don’t suppose Levies and blue work shirts would do the job?
I wondered the same thing. What is the use of camo no matter the color on a ship or sub? If Navy is on land in combat issue camo the same as everyone else there
The blue camp uniform was an expensive bad joke….very hot, heavy denim type material with, get this, heavy duty elasto-waist band…the rough side out Bates black boots available in the uniform store were uncomfortable and didn’t stand up to wear… and, of course, it made us look like we were Estonian Air Force or worse….I really missed giving up my tried and true khakis, black shoes and command ball cap to take shit from the other services for looking like an idiot…guess it took seven years for the Navy leadership to finally figure it out…and as for the new uniform, as already noted on this thread, couldn’t they have found a more compelling model?..sort of fortifies an enduring stereotype that is unfortunately based “largely” in fact
It should have never got that far. Many of us told the cock suckers with two stars on their anchors on that task force during the wear test that these things were garbage. Glad I retired before they went mainstream.
And how is it that the new stuff will not also be ” uncomfortable, heavy and a fire hazard.”? Aren’t they just the same stuff in a different color?
What happened to the old blue work uniform, blue shirt, trousers, work jacket…not blue enough for mabus the maybe asshole?
We wore dungaree pants and dungaree shirts with no problems before I went in and for some time after I got out. I do not understand why they have to fix something that is not broken by dumping the dungaree working uniform.
Exactly! We used to wear the OD pants when working the flight deck, but otherwise dungarees were the perfect work uniform.
Yeah… Bring back the Dixie cup and the Chambray shirt, etc. It ain’t MY Navy so…
Gotta keep those supply contractors happy, doncha know.
And how much you want to bet the new shit STILL won’t be FR rated?
Nothing more fun than fighting a fire or steam line rupture in shit that’s gonna melt on you, but you get dinged during fire drills cause you didn’t have your flash hood on properly.
Fucking Retarded rated? I think you’re wrong. I’d say this is pretty high on the Fucking Retarded Rating scale.
You’re half right.
Fire retardant.
Tomayto tomahto…..
They are not FR, but the NECC and NSW forces that have been in this uniform for the last SIX years have the FROG Gear. This uniform is not for underway, so should not matter
Sorry Chief, not good enough, especially when you’re on the boat with loads of electrical arc flash potential and shutdown in hot standby, meaning plenty of live steam behind the main stops.
Did you not read what I said. This is not a Sea duty uniform for underway. The Navy is looking at going to a coast GRD type Sea duty uniform.
Oy, shit! They actually want a uniform like the Coast Guard ODU?
That uniform is basically from HELL.
Heavy, uncomfortable, doesn’t fit properly no matter what you do with it, the buttons keep coming undone, or you can’t get them to button right away, so you’re fiddling with them for 20 minutes. AND, if you fall off the boat, you will immediately blend right into the water, because they go a nice, dark blue that is impossible to see at noon on a nice bright sunny day, with a search light pointed right at them.
Agree 100%
And maybe you should read what I said, “Chief.”
Even inport hazards still exist. Even more so. Ask Former EM1/SS about OI-55.
Not for shipboard use.
I hated OI-55 / OI-22 with a passion. During my time in, we never had an incident.
Do you have a link to the sea duty uniform you’re describing, Chief?
Thanks!
Old Navy times, I’ll look it up.
Old Navy Times?
A clothing store with a newspaper. Fascinating!
Honestly I blame Congress. They let the Marines get away with making their own field uniform in the early 2000’s and after that it was a race to the bottom to see who could most effectively plunder the taxpayers pockets and now every service has to have a similar uniform, but JUST different enough that you can’t use the same contractors or interchange parts.
Hey, remember how from about 1982 until the early 2000’s, every service wore the exact same field/duty uniform, the BDU? ‘Member?
Mmmm…these member berries are good!
To be fair, the Corps actually did decent research and didn’t spend an assload of money. 319K in development compared to the millions spent by the Army every few years to get something done.
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/04/12/12482/pentagon-spends-billions-duplicative-camouflage-outfits-gao-says
Jay, it does sound like they did a better job than the Army, but the question remains, were the changes actually needed, and worth the cost, whatever it was… if not, it’s like your wife coming home and telling you she saved 30% on a $200 pair of shoes that she didn’t need…
If that’s true, then common sense and fiscal responsibility ought to dictate that the USMC be profusely thanked for their research and then that the USMC uniform be adopted by all services.
Given that utility uniforms serve pretty much the same function in all services, there’s no reason they shouldn’t have simply been adopted for all of them.
But my guess is that if anyone suggested that the Army, Air Force and Navy adopt the USMC uniform (minus the miniature EGA, which should not have been on there anyway) the Marines would have raised holy hell.
So the Marines got to keep their “special” uniform, and as anyone with children knows, once you give one of your kids a “special treat”, the other kids are going to scream and throw a temper tantrum until they get THEIR special treat.
Then the Army came out with their ridiculous ACU uniform – similar in many respects to the USMC uniform, but of course it HAD to have different camo pattern (because apparently the Army and Marines fight in different parts of the world even though I’m pretty sure we were side by side in both Afghanistan and Iraq.)
And then with the Marines and Army having their own unique, distinctive field uniforms, well, the USAF HAD to have their own – again, even though we almost always deploy in a joint environment where every service works together, their uniform had to have yet ANOTHER uniform design and a completely DIFFERENT camo pattern.
And we know the rest.
But Congress, which controls the purse strings, is supposed to be the “adult” that reins in this nonsense.
Seriously, can anyone actually justify the 4 services having 4 completely different field uniforms with 4 different “camo” patterns? Particuarly when all 4 services wore the same field uniform with the same camo pattern for over 20 years and AFAIK it never impaired their ability to do their jobs in the field?
Anyone? Anyone?
Actually, as I recall much if not all of the development work regarding MARPAT was done at the US Army’s Natick Labs – largely by the US Army staff there.
And spare me the “but the USMC paid for that” argument. The USMC uses equipment that the other services develop all the time – in fact, that’s the reason the USMC’s R&D budget is so small in comparison to the other services. So there’s no valid argument that MARPAT should be USMC-only on that basis, either.
Last time I checked, the USMC is part of DoD. The SECDEF should simply have told the USMC back in the early 2000s, “Um, no. You develop it, DoD policy is that any service can adopt it if they choose. Period. And if you try to pay the ‘It’s patented’ card, DoD will simply assert ownership of the patent rights.”
Unfortunately, the SECDEF at the time didn’t do that. And as a result, we’ve p!ssed away literally billions riding the “new uniform carousel” ever since.
You say that like the Marines are just Naval Infantry….
To the extravagant cost of the US Military cammo misadventures over the last few years I say this (written a few years ago): 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 a hoot in hell what Kanye and Kim’s baby is named (and therefore are an intelligent person). To help take this in, let’s look at the congressional attention played to the egregious amount of money the military has spent on uniforms. So the background is that House is discussing laws that would make the military use a common camouflage combat uniform. Why is this? Because the military’s 4 branches have spent $14,344,000 on their 9 uniforms – and several are admitted flops. 14 million! Wow! That’s a shitload of money! I could do a lot with that much cash. Well, apparently the House members feel the same. So they have… Read more »
The math there seems a bit off and rather misleading. I’m guessing that’s only the cost to develop the pattern – not to field the uniform to an entire service on a replacement basis.
I say that because the Navy estimates it will cost around $180M to field its newest utility uniform to the Navy alone. I’ve heard costs far larger than that for deploying the Army’s ACU – but then again, add in the ARNG and USAR, and we’re talking probably 2x as many folks.
And you’re not necessarily only talking the uniform when a service changes its field uniform. Field gear (backpacks, LCE, body armor, etc . . . ) is also camouflaged. That needs to match (or at least be compatible with) the uniform. So when the uniform changes, that’s not the only thing that changes. A bunch of other stuff changes too.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the “new uniform carousel” has cost DoD at least $2B since 2001. And while $2B may not sound like much in terms of the overall Federal budget, it sure could buy a lot of spare parts and fuel – which would in turn enable a whole lot of training.
Yes, it doesn’t count the cost of supplying the uniforms to the troops, but I recall buying all of my MARPAT uniforms throughout the years except for about 4 pairs I got when deploying. Yes, gear needs to match in some cases, but the Marines just went with “coyote color” for almost all things. Not that I’m saying other branches don’t have to “accessorize” and that does cost money. How much of that, however, would have been replaced anyway so there was just an upfront cost for the design.
In the end, however, the point is it is chump change compared to entitlement spending.
And for the Reserve Component, at least enlisted do not get a uniform stipend every year. So, their uniforms are all “free”. Once in a while they do free uniforms for Officers, so I don’t know if that’ll hold true for the new ACUs as well.
Just for USAR there are 158,268 enlisted personnel times 4ea uniforms, along with the new shirts, socks, and all the other accessories that go with a uniform. = Buku money.
Whether it’s “chump change” compared to other expenditures is irrelevant – $14 million is still a hell of a lot of money and the questions that need to be asked are
(a) What value (if any) did the Dod receive for that $14 million that they would not have received had they not spent it and
(b) if the value wasn’t there (which it wasn’t) then were there other programs that could have used that $14 million but didn’t have it?
From my point of view, this was what happens when the country goes to war and then opportunistic contractors start whispering in the ear of their military patrons saying “you really should ask Congress for $X million for this or that” and with Congress just rubber stamping everything because they didn’t want to look “soft on defense.”
There’s nothing patriotic about spending $14 million to “fix” something that was never broken in the first place, even if that $14 million is just a drop in the bucket, it’s still a waste.
It’s the $14 million here, $14 million there, that eventually adds up to the real money. (Apologies to Mr. Dirksen.) Instead of doing some chickenshit “it’s only a .0000X% of the total”, they SHOULD be saying ‘here’s $14 million in waste that we can cut.’ Those throwaway percentages are how we got into this perpetual, overspending, if-we’re-broke-we’ll-print-some-more mess in the first place.
Actually, up until 2000 or so the Army was the proponent for ground combat uniforms. We had 3: woodland, desert, and winter battle dress uniforms.
It was the Marines that broke away from this- they wanted their own thing and they got it. Marat actually has little EGAs mixed in with the pixels so no one else can wear it
The blueberries have a similar US Navy insignia in the pattern.
My commercially bought scrubs also have the EGA on my woodland and desert patterns as do my aquaflage scrubs similarly have the Navy logo.
I found it surprising that commercial scrubs actually had those.
Checked my 511 tactical vest and long sleeve shirt (yeah…ahmma gear queer, whatever)and that MARPAT pattern is sans EGA
The utilities we wore in the Marines in the early 60’s were the same as WWII. Worked just fine.
As one who wore the old woodland cammies and will wear the MARPAT for about a year and a half more, I would say that improvement was sorely needed. The woodland cammies (AKA BDUs in Army lingo) weren’t a very effective camo system. The black in it was one of the problems as it made it very dark looking at a distance. the woodland MARPAT is very much an improvement. The Desert Tricolors worked very well in the desert, however. That being said, the desert MARPAT also works extremely well.
It was that bullshyt about all military looking the same..as if thats important…who was it that started this shyt Zumwalt?
I could fill an entire closet (top to bottom) with all of the uniforms that I’ve had to acquire over the past 15 years.
So I can go pick up blueberry pants at a surplsu store on the cheap now, right?
Will they keep mosquitoes from biting?
Still in use for the next year for a lot of units. Won’t be completely phased out until October 2019.
Yeah, you’ll see a lot of them in the surplus stores right up there with the dungaree jeans and johnny cash uniforms. I expect an extensive amount of purchases in the state of Florida.
Good, because I’m going to get Danner’s Realtree camo hunting boots, insulated and waterproof) for winter stuff, so those old blueberries will look quite debonair over three sets of thermals and skating leggings.
And yet that uniform allowance check we got every year seemed to be spent on booze. Go figure.
I bought 3 sets of CNT whites when I was in A school, and from then until I got out over a decade later the only uniform items I ever spent money on were dungarees, command ballcaps, ribbon racks, crows and hashmarks.
Oh, for Pete’s sake! When was the last time the military was a fashion statement? 19th century England, wasn’t it?
Go back to cotton dungarees and cotton chambray shirts. They are practical, not a fire hazard, and practically wash-and-wear.
In case DoD has forgotten, the Navy is a sea-going enterprise, not a land force. The only people who need camo are the CBs and SEALs. Period.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…pump the brakes. A rational & cost effective solution to the military’s uniform problem has no business being a part of this thread.
Check yourself and come correct
Fiddlesticks. Black gabardine is perfectly appropriate for pants and jackets, and offers perfect camoflage at night, but nobody at the 5-sided Insane Asylum sees it my way, and my offer was as cost-saving as you can get.
“The only people who need camo are the CBs and SEALs. Period.”
The majority of Hospital Corpsmen do their sea duty with the FMF.
and dungarees suck, they aren’t a functional uniform on ship. The Navy Blue jumpsuits are fire retardant, allow much better freedom of movement and don’t get instantly disheveled as soon as you do the slightest bit of manual labor.
Only time I wore dungarees as ships company was when as the DDO I would go to 8 o’clock reports.
“Hospital Corpsmen do their sea duty with the FMF”
Yes, but they wear Marine Camo when serving with FMF units. They wouldn’t require Navy camo.
lol…I didn’t say they did. My comment was well within the context of what I was replying to.
I believe what I was getting at is that it is another case where the Navy, by and large, wouldn’t need its own cammo – or that much of one, anyway, if only SEALs and CBs had it. It was not to counter any argument you made, really.
You got that right!
Dungaree pants & shirt was the working uniform in my day, but in Engineering we wore coveralls 95% of the time. I think that’s SOP from what I’ve seen & heard to this day. I like the extra pockets these BDU-types uniforms provide, but the camouflage pattern of any kind is utterly ridiculous and a waste of money. How about plain blue?
Navy personnel assigned to forward bases were camouflage is necessary should wear the same cammo as Marines. Commonalty and Economies of Scale save money…which is why that won’t happen.
This is not a sea duty uniform, only shore, shore based, overseas, and type II duty stations like Airwings,NECC (Seabees,EOD, Riverine,Cargo handling,EXW Intel, and all NSW units. NECC and NSW have been in the Type III for the last six years.
‘Navy personnel assigned to forward bases were camouflage is necessary should wear the same cammo as Marines.’
Shack.
That’s the way it used to be from WW2 until just recently, and it worked just fine. Sailors always used to wear USMC pattern utilities whenever they were out in the field; the only difference was that the Sailors had ‘U.S. Navy’ stenciled on their left breast pockets instead of an EGA and USMC.
Still not sure why any of that had to change…
“Still not sure why any of that had to change…”
Money, Mick. Always follow the money.
They also had their Navy rank patches on the uniform
Dungarees were great but in engineering, one could not roll up the sleeves due to being around steam. We had a 600 lb main steam line from the hole (boiler room) to the engine room. Being in A Gang (div) I operated out of the diesel/AC repair shop forward hanger bay. So I had my sleeves rolled up one day as I was repairing one of the steam laundry presses and as I rolled over underneath the press, my arm hit one of the pipes and wow, what a burn. Never owned seafarers though.Yea, we always tried to look and be AJ Squared Away.
Well, at least they’ll be visible if they fall overboard. However, they need to remember that no matter how much they want to be screwed by Marines, dressing up as one doesn’t make you one.
I wonder which congresscritters represent the locations where these things are made….
Nah. The armed forces would -never- switch uniforms just to stroke congresscritters…..
Well I hope the new uniforms don’t cause all the Sailors to grow boobs like the guy in the picture.
I agree with Jeff. Whats wrong with plain shirt and pants? Can be manufactured by almost anyone- Oops, then whatever congress critter is getting a kickback from the one authorized manufacturer won’t get his graft check.
When are they going to try titty nipple pink in support of breast cancer awarness like every other damn thing.
Serious question for Navy types: What uniforms do sailors wear on ships nowadays? Officers and Chiefs still wear khaki’s, right?
So let’s say a sailor who works in the engine compartment of a destroyer or one who works in the CIC of an aircraft carrier? Are they in dungarees or have those all been replaced by something else?
Also am I the only one who thinks it’s ironic that the service that has the least amount of personal “locker” space for each person – the Navy- issues the most bewildering array of uniforms? In my time in the Army we had exactly two uniforms: BDUs for daily wear and dress greens (which could be either class A with the jacket or class B without) which most soldiers wore – at most – a few times a year.
Boats (especially back aft) were FR poppy suits/coveralls and tennis shoes at sea.
In port, back in the day, it was dungarees/khakis, unless you were topside or pier sentry, in which case it was whites/blues, depending on location and time of year. Now it’s blueberries.
And to answer your other question, yeah–most of our rack space was working uniforms, and maybe a set of dress whites/blues, if that.
I figured they would go with the ass-less chaps or some shit……
I thought those were just for sub duty?
https://youtu.be/pyJXrrywWlY
By definition, all chaps are ass-less. If they have an “ass”, they’re called pants.
There, that’s something you know now….
seems to me they’d be crotchless pants.
Who’s the bag of donuts they got to pose for in the NWU. She looks like a bag of ass. Way to portray the Navy in a great light.
Hated those NWU, they are cut different and wore like shit, and try opening up those Velcro pockets quietly.
I guess everyone want to look like the cool kids.
She might be the CO’s mascot.
Doesn’t matter what they’re wearing, they’re still squids…..
Ain’t no pattern in the world that will camouflage that fact
Squid? Oh I get it…hahahahahahahahaha.
Yeah, never heard that one before.
Yup. This is clearly them trying to play dress up to look like the cool kid branches. Reality is they’ll still be navy and it changes nothing. They did this before with the digital camo without the EGA shortly after the Corps came out with their new pattern and that wasn’t special enough for them so they went blue and other patterns. Once it’s common knowledge that camo represents sailors they’ll be looking for something new.
I find it hilarious the Marine Corps is still being blamed by some for taking the initiative and designing some new camo responsibly because all the other branches can’t.
As I said above, I don’t “blame” the Marine Corps any more than I would “blame” a toddler for throwing a temper tantrum. I blame the “adults” at DoD who, when the other children (Army, Air Force and Navy) threw their temper tantrums and demanded special clothing, didn’t clamp down and say “one field uniform for everybody, PERIOD.”
You are all forgetting the camo serves two purposes
It both hides you and identifies you
One look at the ” blueberries” and you know this is an American Navy person
As others have said there is no concealment needed on a ship
Dungarees do not serve the identification function as many civilians wear these
Separate patterns for each service is not a bad idea
You Could conceivably save money by having the same style of uniform for all services and just printing each service a different pattern
The Army, Navy, Air Force AND Marines all wore BDUs for years and years with just a name tape to differentiate while on installations and some training exercises. There weren’t “recognition” issues.
The only differences really were rank and branch insignia and branch nametape being different.
This is another effort to get another piece of the budget for themselves.
yeh, camo greens are really useful on gray ships at sea! DUH!
Maybe they changed because they found that the blue cammo hid the ships from commercial vessels, thus the recent collisions? /sarc
I think the gal is in the underway maternity outfit.
Bravo Navy! You came up with the one thing stupider than blending in with water. I didn’t think you could do it, but you proved me wrong. Now the only thing a US sailor will blend in with is every other military branch.
What’s wrong with the old dungaree jeans and light blue shirts? Sailors wearing that uniform kicked tons of ass over the years. Is that not cool enough for the cool kids?
I agree. Every sailor I saw wore bell bottom dungarees that were non-reg and nobody said nuthin’ about it. Those pants, a sweater and a peacoat and a watch cap were da bomb!
Aye, Aye. Almost an aside Ex:
We actually drilled with using bell bottoms an emergency flotation device AND IT WORKED.
Further aside: I picked up a blue chambray shirt at NAS Key West several years ago that has US Navy above the left pocket. I still wear it on special occassions.
Great Lakes boot camp Company 475 in 63 had us jumping into the pool with the dungarees. Too bad the boys and girls were not training together in those days because we went in B.A. (that’s bare ass to the non 50’s generation)
Seafarer dungarees possibly.
i don’t see why they just don’t go back to the old dungaree working uniform. they were inexpensive, fire retardant and automatically identified a Sailor as a Sailor….
And easy as hell to wash and maintain.
AND comfortable!! easy to store in those postage stamp lockers!!
This is worse than the blue camo and far more transparent that the US Navy wants to look like gun toting operators from other branches. Maybe they should stop trying to fit in and look like something they aren’t and go do their ship thing instead.
Not unlike how some cops want to cruise around everywhere they go wearing tacticool plate-carrier vests with 42 AR mags and color-subdued versions of their department patch and badge…
Around here that would be the truck weight enforcement guys.
Sorry, but I have to ask (and if it’s already been answered, bear with me) …
But what in the name of the Wide World Of Sports does the NAVY need with CAMOUFLAGE in the first place? Where the hell are they going to hide on a ship???
(Yes, I know not all Naval personnel are at sea. Many are ashore and some are SEALs and SeaBees. I get it that those select few need camouflage because they are where people shoot at things.)
Come on, current and former squids … ‘fess up. What does the Navy need with camouflage – beyond looking “cool” like everybody else?
“Come on, current and former squids … ‘fess up”
You think these decisions are even remotely coming from the deckplate level? lol
This came from the old MCPON Stevens, the same jack ass that took the Rates away.
Rephrase: “What admirals need jobs with uniform suppliers after retirement in their favorite Congresscritters’ districts?” Fixed it.
Perhaps they could go with this pattern:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=bQzczzo9&id=289B38CA67D195407B6006373967B503D4DF5B53&thid=OIP.bQzczzo9uk54KYymUKHZOgEsDg&q=ship+camo&simid=608033075793429481&selectedindex=2&mode=overlay&first=1
And it’s non gender specific.
They don’t! politicians getting kickbacks!!
Those dungarees we wore also looked cool with your keys and a coffee mug hanging from the belt plus the waste rag hanging out of your right rear pocket and wearing boon dockers to boot, no pun intended-Yea right.
Don’t forget the green “Memo” notebook we all carried. Those things were handy as hell.
Especially for short-timers.
Still carry my “patrol log”
Still use SMEAC for planing in just about all tasks that require planning.
It’s funny when I’m study all these newfangled learning theories and ways to plan curriculum and things and still find SMEAC works fine.
Shack, Doc.
SMEAC is good to go; I still use it all the time as well.
SMEAC ‘ain’t broke’, and it doesn’t need to be ‘fixed’.
Like you, I stick with what is proven to work.
Way back, the U S Army used to imitate the prevailing european(!) army uniforms. During the Civil War, the French- Kepis, Zouaves. Then, the Prussian Pickelhaube. I’m wondering if this is more of the same. As when they moved rank from the collar and sleeves (I’m OLD) and put it on that little placket (or whatever) on the chest. NATO stuff, I figured. Like the Italian Coastal something or others. Oh, and EVERYBODY wear that beret. A companion of mine said it was as if the Army was upset about something, and bought itself a new hat to feel better.
A uniform which performs well and still looks sharp is asking too much? Apparently so.
Yes, it’s probably somewhat frivolous that each branch should have it’s own distinctive uniform but that in and of itself really shouldn’t cost much.
Here’s my suggestion: Figure out what design functions/wears best, then make a bunch of them. Use a slightly different pattern for each of the services but use the exact same fabric for everybody’s utility/duty/field/whatever you call what used to be the BDU uniform. Similar process for dress uniforms – as much as possible, use the same style shirts and pants in different colors. Call it whatever you want, but the uniform equivalent of a suit coat could even be almost identical among the services. Let the Marines keep their fancy red jacket and blue pants – the R & D has already been done on that one. (Every other service could keep their formal uniform – who cares anyway?)
It just makes the services look stupid when they insist on these frequent uniform changes. Silly games played by silly people.
I’ve had a bit of scotch and plundered my way through the comments.
Navy Uniforms?… Whatever hides the panty lines on guys and accentuates it on women. That’ll get my vote, for what THAT’S worth.
I just would like to note, almost all of you frequent and not-so-frequent TAH’ers posted on this.
Kinda makes me feel like the big ol’ dysfunctional family is here.
Toast to all y’alls!!!
me too, cheers!
The backhanded reason that Gen Jones wanted a new uniform for the Marine Corps was that he didn’t want others to mistaken sailors for Marines for a variety of reasons. The Marine Corps had tested a no-iron fabric years before that and Gen Krulak announced it when he was the Commandant. When Gen Jones came to Korea, he asked us to go get a cammie blouse embroidered and the S-4 Gunny did went to Itaewon and had it done. Uniforms are just that, to identify a Service and nothing else. Unless you are a SOF personnel, it’s kind of hard to be stealthy with MRAPs, tanks, HMMWVs rolling behind you. Back then, the Marine Corps even thought about bringing back the legins.
How is this waiting tax payers money? Apparently you’re unaware that they pay for their own uniform. Granted they get a small allowance for uniform replacement and upkeep but that’s still money they earned. I along with MANY, MANY people like the look of the blueberries. They set Sailors apart and the whole Navy and blue thing kind goes together. Although, I have heard many Sailors complain about how thick and cumbersome they are. Anyway, does it really matter THAT much. It’s a work uniform. What’s the big deal. No ones uniform compares to the Navy dress whites and dress blues.