An Australian troop in the field as his trousers fall apart.
Posted on 09/18/2011 7:05:20 AM PDT by naturalman1975
An Australian troop in the field as his trousers fall apart.
NEW US-made camouflage pants are literally falling to pieces on some Diggers in Afghanistan.
The hi-tech MultiCam pants were tried by special forces soldiers before the Government spent $2 million for 5000 sets of the combat clothing. But infantry troops in Afghanistan are apparently much tougher on the clothing, the Herald Sun reported.
"Special forces do a different job to us," one soldier said. "We are out for days on end living in the dirt."
The Diggers are generally happy with the MultiCam clothing, which is more comfortable and better suited to mixed terrain.
But in many cases the pants, which include special stretch sections and built-in knee pads, are tearing along seams where stretch fabric meets non-stretch fabric.
Some soldiers can no longer wear them, others have patched them up, some are happy to wear shredded pants.
Some Diggers mix MultiCam tops with old pants.
"The problem is along the stitching where the fabrics meet," one said. "It seems the distance between waist and crotch is too small, especially for taller guys."
Defence Materiel Minister Jason Clare, who fast-tracked the MultiCam clothing and lighter body armour, said the tearing problem must be fixed.
He said replacement uniforms and patching kits had been delivered to Afghanistan.
"The advice from special forces soldiers is that this is the best combat uniform for ... Afghanistan," his spokesman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Bump
Probably makes taking a wiz a lot easier.
I would be willing to bet these were made in China. Would not surprise me.
Surely they’ll get their money back, plus a failure-to-perform bonus, from the manufacturer.
Judging from the picture, this was not a seam failure, but a material failure. Probably the best way to overcome that is by putting thin nylon thread interspersed with the cotton, say one out of every 10 threads.
While it will still get holes, it will be much less likely to get bad tears like this one, yet only be marginally more expensive.
Read the FIRST LINE of the summary. Allow me to help you: "NEW US-made camouflage pants are literally falling to pieces on some Diggers in Afghanistan."
Now pay up. Cashier's Check for $100 is fine with me.
Lowest bidder...
Made in Brooklyn. Union.. Nuff said.
Been there, done that...back in the mid-late 80's when I was in the Army. They called it "rip stop." It was used in the "summer weight" BDU's. They were utter crap. No, the rips didn't stop.
the newest BSA, Boy Scouts of America uniforms are now made in china. The new uniforms have a pocket on the sleeves for their cigarettes, and are much cheaper made than the ones made in America. unfortunately, there are NO manufacturers left in this country.
I keep a spool of Spiderwire ice fishing line around that I use to sew my buttons, stuff is almost indestructible, I think its made from Spectra.
LOL!
...reminds me of back in the early 1990s when Mc-Butthead just couldn’t resist the urge to dick around with our uniforms. Sheesh... how many times in a year did they change the thing around? It was embarrassing that our top brass didn’t have anything better to do than interfere with uniforms.
Anyway... this multicam article reminds me of when they came out with those summer-weights and called them rip-stops. Of course, because of what happened to them at the first sign of a small tear, we renamed them rip-starts. :-)
After my first set, I REFUSED to purchase any more of them. I wore winter-weights during hot weather, but I bought ONE set of winter-weights that season and guys on my team bought THREE sets of those worthless rip-start summer-weights...which were worn OUT and looked like hell before a year was up.
I’m sure they’ll get this multicam issue fixed... but they should know better than to “rush” something like this with soldiers. IF it’s going to go wrong or break, those guys are going to discover it quickly. :-)
I was sent to Viet Nam in November of 1965. If they had jungle fatigues then, I was not issued any. The first few months in the jungle I wore my state side fatigues. This included the Yellow/Black US ARMY, white name tag, and white jump wings. Somewhere along the line the fatigues gave out and I did get jungle uniform along with the fancy new jungle boots.
I never gave my uniform much thought. It was only years later looking back at photos from the time did I realize just how much of a target we were.
The seam has the effect of focusing the normal friction of motion onto a very narrow section of fabric, so in a way it’s both. The way to prevent it would be to have graduated elasticity between the stretchy and non-stretchy parts, so that the seams have more give to them. But that would be tricky with the designs they’re using.
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