This is an excellent, concise article by LTC Eugene Wallace of PM SCIE at PEO SOldier regarding the Camouflage Improvement Effort. It was published last October in Army AL&T Magazine. At the time of the writing they expected to record about 100,000 data points but as I understand it they overshot this a bit and are upwards of 120,000. That’s a lot of numbers to crunch and a lot of data to interpret.
Concealment Capability – Army AL&T Magazine – Oct 12 by solsys
Tags: LTC Eugene Wallace
It amazes me how far we’ve come since the WWII timeframe, back when those ignorant Gyrenes and Soldiers used to choose battle uniforms by simply asking stupid questions like, “Does this match where we’re going to be fighting?” and “Will this garment last for an extended period, even when it cannot be washed and/or babied?”.
Why, these days, we appoint Colonels and better – being, as it is, that they are the primary real-life user of combat hunting clothes, anyway – to manage the collection of > 120,000 data points (one data point must be collected for each stitch employed on a uniform) we’ve collected so as to not duplicate the gloriously successful fielding of a uniform that universally matches nothing outside grandma’s living room, uses yards of Velcro, and has an f’ing PEN HOLDER on the sleeve to satisfy the REMF brigade. Oh, and don’t forget having to drop another $50 so you can put your life story ON the idiotic thing with patches and lame tapes.
The entire process is disgusting.
It’s funny. Troops bitched about having to sew stuff on so the Army listened with the ACU and introduced Velcro like the SOF guys use. And then, everyone bitched about that, so they went back to sew on. Now, you complain about sewing stuff on.
Classic…
Nah, not exactly. I was in the Corps when we went to name tapes, and I hated that nonsense even then. It is enough that you’re a soldier, IMO, and none is better than any other. I personally don’t want unit insignia, name tapes, or anything else on my uniform. I am a soldier (now), and I take great pride in what I am and do….I feel zero need to engage in uniform wiener measurement.
That’s all I meant. I pay a nice lady to sew stuff on for me, so there’s no crying about that from me.
I always thought that the reason the SOF guys used Velcro-attached insignia was so that they could strip all the insignia off their uniforms and kit before going on sneaky-beaky, plausible-deniability missions.
Going with Velcro-attached tapes, badges and patches for everybody else might have seemed cool and sexy to the rank-and-file, but frankly such decisions should not be made on the basis of popularity or the chics-dig-it factor.
Function should trump form.
I also don’t remember any of us bitching about the use of sew-on insignia on our BDUs back in the day. In fact, I think we all agreed that it looked nice and professional.
Just my random 2-cents worth….
No, everybody bitched about the cost.
This methodology for determining the effectiveness of camouflage in a given environment still misses the boat. While a step ahead of more traditional methods of qualitatively assessing the “blendedness” or a participant’s detection rate/time of a camouflage pattern in a given environment, it still fails at its most fundamental level – the purpose of camouflage is to prevent/minimize detection in the first place. The ideal camouflage will never disclose the location or even presence of an individual in a given environment; therefore, why are participates who’s role it is to determine a pattern’s effectiveness at a given distance told what they should be looking for? This promotes a preconceived notion that “something or someone” is out there, which causes the participant to actively scan the target area for human presence. And although no camouflage is completely perfect, I’m simply stating the general methodology needs to be reworked to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of a camouflage pattern in a given environment. If the pattern is truly effective, the participant will never notice or detect any human presence at a given distance. RLTW!
In a perfect world all operations would be done with perfect surprise on unsuspecting targets. Unfortunately the vast majority of the time the people we are fighting against are on their guard and actively looking for us either offensively or defensively. The entire purpose of camo in the military is to hide us from the enemy who are looking for us. The optimal way to test something is how it will be used, so why should they test camo on people that have no idea they are looking for someone/something???