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It was too good for this world, and way ahead of its time. It was the ultimate in finding the intersection of reverse psychology and optical aposematism.
The thinking was that it was so ridiculous enemy combatants would have to do a doubletake. It would be like seeing US warfighters wearing bright pink and high heels (…they’re working on that), the enemy’s disgust and confusion would buy precious time to see ambushes and return effective fire. “It has to be a decoy. No 1st class military power would make soldiers wear something you can see from space!” they would think, buying our guys precious time.
Millions of man hours were spent at various Naval Surface Warfare Centers trying to meet Army requests to “make a wearable camouflage that mimics as perfectly as possible US Navy WWII Dazzle Pattern 3 to conceal a soldier’s range, speed, and bearing to a target,” don’t laugh…
…some war college graduate clinched a star for it, you can bet on it.
This..
ALL of this.
Bravo sir.
(High heels made me chuckle and cry at the same time…)
It actually worked really well by accident for low light urban transition areas. But that’s it.
It also worked when it faded and was covered in dust. You looked just like the mountains you prowled.
But I sure appreciated having real camouflage! I remember my first moment like this picture in 2011 when I watched a combined patrol during RIP consisting of soldiers from the 2/101 “Strike” in ACUs and incoming 3/10 “Spartans” in OCP (Operation Enduring Freedom CP) pass through grape rows and huts in Zharay. I thought, “Wow I looked like an asshat for the last 5 years in my cyber-camo gear.” It was actually difficult to locate a gun team in OCPs while guys in ACUs were blindingly obvious right next to them.
More like some retired general clenched a hefty government contract for it.
Ironically, they got rid of it just in time for the formation of the space force. That would have probably worked great on the moon!
Maybe while confederate names are being scrubbed from military history, they can go back and take away any awards or positive mentions of whatever morons signed off on this waste of taxpayer dollars.
I saw an article that had (I think) CA National Guard in ACUs sifting through the rubble after a California wildfire destroyed a town. The dude blended in perfectly and it made me realize – ACUs were developed for a scorched earth policy that we just never had the balls to put into practice.
This, this had some validity to it! We genuinely have no idea how UCP came to be since the study that it was conduct under DO NOT exist in public domain. We had the Desert All Over Brush trials but the Army already chose a digital camo (which did not participate in the test) and pick the color scheme that did not even learnt from the test (grey???).
But this camo trial is only a smaller part of the problem that still haunts. What is our overall planning and tactics against a specific war scenario? What is the CONOPs derived from that fighting strategy? What weapon, equipment, camouflage that would fit into that envisioned fighting scenario? Do we know? I suspect not since almost every programs, since the days of revolutionary/concurrency development came out, have been extremely lackluster and mediocre.
If the plan was to level cities and fight in the rubbles, UCP would be the perfect camouflage. Ukrainians was and still is scrambling to get UCP camo and their MM-14 camo is similar to such since the reality is, their cities are bombed and blown out of oblivion!
That’s it . Urban, littoral ,and underground- in short megacities. It’s been a definite undercurrent since Krulak back in the 90’s and shapes/shaped some of the things that don’t seem to make sense. It’s interesting stuff- from Kilcullen, MWI, and ASU. Worth a deep dive.
2007 Ft Jackson during Navy IA training. At the rifle range Army Instructors walking up and down the gravel path behind the firing positions, I thought if they trip and call for help no one will find them. Perfectly blended in.
Great if the world was all gray gravel!
ACU’s had their moments of usefulness, like when really dirty as mentioned above. They even worked ok with snow on the ground in AFG mountains. When 2/508 (IIRC) tried the ACU Deltas I thought they were an interesting idea with the brown added.
A solution in search of a problem… $30 million later and everything comes full circle and back to a facsimile of the original Scorpion camouflage pattern, but rebranded Scorpion W2 aka OCP. If that’s not a boondoggle, then I don’t know what is.
If anyone wants to know why Afghanistan and Iraq were a complete debacle or how the military went WOKE…. this…this right here was the canary in the coal mine.
Not a single Corps or Division commander had the Intestinal Fortitude to put their stars on the line and say “My troops are not gonna wear this trash.” Not a single one. No letters to congress, no calling attention to the obvious fraud or a competition. They all tripped over themselves to be good little boys and be the first to wear it.
Now they tell us we should be about “People First”. Ha what a joke. We will never know how many soldiers died because their patrol was spotted light years away due to this ridiculous “camouflage”. Undoubtedly it is a non-zero number of fatalities.
Likewise this same “don’t rock the boat” mentality infected everything else. How else do you explain the following:
Not a single flag officer stood up to sound the alarm that Iraq and Afghanistan mission was going nowhere, had no campaign plan and no exit strategy.
Not a single flag officer stood up for troops being forced out over a non-functioning “vaccine” that is less effective everyday.
Not a single flag officer is standing up against this color revolution masquerading as WOKE anti-American nonsense being forced into the military.
They are all sycophantic drones who talk about the “Army Values” but display none and hold others to a stand that they themselves do not abide by.
We use to have Generals, now we are left with a bunch of cosplaying bureaucrats ticking the career boxes until they can retire and get that sweet Raytheon or Lockheed job.
It turns out that is cartoonishly stupid “camouflage” uniform was the ultimate predictor for the future downfall of military leadership, values and decision making.
Wearing what you’re told is basic soldiering. If you can’t follow simple instructions, it’s better for everyone you’re not in the military.
Standing up and speaking the truth about mind-numbed stupidity is, or was, basic integrity. The quality of thought and leadership at the top dribbles down like a leaking barrel over the entire organization.
The great complexity of the Army (and all of DoD), and why things seemingly cannot ever be fixed, is explained and justified as a “System Of Systems”, and have taken many decades to grow. The interlocking diagrams go many PowerPoint slides deep. Ok, yes, I will agree that within such a huge and complex organization as the US military establishment, almost everything will in some way interconnect or have some sort of impact on everything else. Strategy, Doctrine, Material, Personnel, Training, etc, etc. Obviously. However, we may have long-since reached the point where the sheer weight and inertia of the “System Of Systems”, as it now exists, is killing us. Is it time to radically rip-out some of these “Systems” from the overall “System”, accept the risk of change, and let some chips fall where they may, BEFORE we lose a really important war?