I'm not one of those bloggers that feels the need to play gotcha every time some big paper gets a story wrong. But yesterday's article on page one (page one!) of the New York Times is lightweight, even for a breezy feature.
It's all about the Army's new-ish combat uniform -- and how soldiers don't like the velcro on the ensemble. Which is kind of interesting, I suppose. But you'd think the fact that the camos don't actually hide soldiers in many environments would get a mention, at least. A lousy sentence. Especially since these Army Combat Uniforms, or ACUs, or supposed to be "universal camouflage." And especially since the Army just decided to sink another $72 million into the new uniforms.
As one Defense Tech, ERV, reader noted the other day:
The ACU (as I have seen in both the woods of Georgia and the desert & urban areas of Iraq) is pretty much crap. Yes, I agree it works well if you are lying still in a gravel parking lot or next to a large moss covered live oak. Any other circumstance, though, you are truly "Ghost Recon". I work at the Recon Surveillance Course 4th RTB at Benning, and teach camouflage here. The grey pattern sticks out like a white ghost. At nighttime it gets highly illuminated by the moon and stars. The ACU is pretty much the joke of the Army. Joke's on you. Thank God I am a Marine!
Or check out this PowerPoint presentation, on how the camo pattern for the new uniforms was picked. What eventually became the ACU's pattern (called "urban track") comes in, at best, 3rd place out of 4. Yet just about every soldier is now wearing that also-ran. Trial after trial between competing patterns were held. And then, out of nowhere, the Army picked the pattern for the ACU -- a pattern that hadn't even been in the tests. That's deserves, at minimum, a brief nod from the Times, no?
(Big ups: WT)
