My last comment reflects on my own experience in Vietnam. We had 1950s utilities and black leather boots and 1942-issue web gear and 1942-lot C-Rations. The cotton utilities rotted off our bodies and the boots came apart almost as fast. We had a pretty decent rifle, the M-14 but the idiots in the rear sent M-16s which had not been sufficiently developed and lots of good people died when their rifle didn't work.
My attitude then and now was that we were worth more than that. We were the few who were at grave risk of death and dismemberment when most of the rest of our generation was having a wonderful time back home. When the new Jungle Boots started showing, they issued me and others used boots that came off the dead. We have to do better than that.
The current army uniform is ridiculous (thank you Natick "Soldier Systems Center") and needed to be replaced.
It just hacks me off to hear alleged conservatives complaining about how much it costs to defend our country. I can tell you how much it costs when we meet at the Wall.
Well, I spent 15 months in Vietnam (including two Tets) and wore that “Flak Vest” every day. I’ve finished working for the Army on a two Billion dollar program for the last 17 years, including in “The Box” at Fort Irwin and the range at Fort Bliss. If the Acquisition Corp can’t get it right on a uniform how in the hell are they going to get it right on a complex weapon system? And I absolutely guarantee you there were advocates just as certain as you for the need for change the last time the Army changed uniforms and the time before that.
I have no problem on how much they spend, just how they spend (waste) it.
I still recall our anger after scoring some army "K-rations) or whatever they were. We knew we were being shat on.
Months of eating dogfood made before we were born. Wife still gags when I tell her of the joy opening a can in the dark and digging into 1/4" of congealed 20+ year old grease.
I’ll second that. I have friends in the Army and when they got their new ACUs, I had to laugh. The original “Universal Camouflage Pattern” ACUs were universally bad. They didn’t blend in with anything anyone could find.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Camouflage_Pattern
“The U.S. Army reported to the media that the basis for the UCP was the Urban Track pattern, which had been modified through the removal of black from the pattern and pixelated. Why the Urban Track pattern was used as the basis for the design given that it received the poorest ratings in visual detection from the Natick Soldier Center’s testing,[14] was unexplained. Pattern comparisons subsequently established that the information provided by the U.S. Army was incorrect, and that the pattern was simply a three-coloured version of MARPAT, itself a derivation of the Canadian CADPAT scheme. No evidence has been presented by the U.S. Army that the new UCP pattern ever underwent proper field testing.
Following building criticism of the poor effectiveness of the pattern in most terrains but importantly the Afghan and Middle Eastern theatres of operations, the use of the pattern was discussed within the US Senate.
When passed by the Senate, House of Representatives Bill 2346 required the Department of Defense to “take immediate action to provide combat uniforms to personnel deployed to Afghanistan with a camouflage pattern that is suited to the environment of Afghanistan.” The Army subsequently initiated re-evaluation of existing and alternative camouflage patterns to determine if this was a necessary action.[17] In recent tests conducted by the U.S. Army’s Natick Soldier Center, results indicated that three other patterns did significantly better than UCP in desert and woodland environments.[18] Four commercial submissions were tested to replace UCP for Army use.[19][20]”
However, someone finally did find a background the ACU/UCP would actually blend into - grandma’s old parlor couch: http://popularmilitary.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ACU-pattern-couch.jpg
See my post above - Natick didn’t actually select that camo pattern. In fact the pattern that was selected was actually one that Natick had noted was terrible. Somewhere between Natick and issue, someone screwed it up.
