The Army does it again...

I was deployed to Kuwait in 2005 when the Army DCUs were fielded. I thought the design poor and the velcro for patches was very unfunctional. Speaking with a couple of guys who rode the convoys through Iraq and they generally hated them. One sergeant told me at night in the dry climate if you did anything with the velcro (open a pocket, etc) it would spark. Not a big one but if you were on guard duty and didn't want to be seen it could be a problem. I would have never thought of that.

Well the Army has finally admitted this uniform was a disaster. And they of course find this out after billions of dollars and years of negative feedback.

Army Drops Universal Camouflage After Spending Billions

After eight years and billions of dollars, the Army has given up on an ambitious effort to clothe its soldiers in a "universal camouflage pattern." The grey uniform, widely issued and widely loathed, was supposed to blend in equally well in all environments, from desert sand to green forest to city streets. It just didn't. Now the Army's going back to the old, obvious approach of having different designs for different places.

"It definitely makes a difference in Afghanistan, because Afghanistan is primarily brown, and there's no brown in the universal pattern," said one Army officer who's deployed wearing the universal camouflage, also called the Advanced Combat Uniform (ACU). Under pressure from unhappy soldiers and the late Rep. John Murtha, the Army had already given up on the universal pattern for troops in Afghanistan, who now wear a "multi-cam" design better suited to the terrain.

Soldiers elsewhere around the world, though, still have to make do with the universal-pattern ACU -- or work around it by finding unofficial sources of uniforms. "The ACU does fine in the urban environment," the officer said, where its grey shades blend in with concrete (see the picture). But elsewhere, he went on, "guys use the old woodland pattern" -- a discontinued US uniform -- "when they're out in Thailand or the Philippines.... or they'll trade their ACUs out with the locals."...

...So the problem isn't that the Army tried to do something simple and messed it up. It's that the Army tried something impossibly difficult. Short of some kind of sci-fi cloaking device or invisibility field a la Predator or Star Trek -- which some people are actually working on -- there's no way to come up with a single color scheme or camo pattern that blends in equally well in all environments. "In this case the desire for standardization seems to have transcended common sense," said Loren Thompson, a defense industry consultant and analyst who often writes for AOL Defense. "It's obvious that a pattern working well in a jungle would not work well in most deserts."...

I was speaking with a Marine major back in 07 on the uniform and he told me the Army and USMC were working together on a universal BDU. But at some point the Marines said "Sorry, we need two uniforms, a woodland and a desert one....". The Army of course went on with it and ended up with a complete waste. Now they will spend billions on a new duty uniform. Hey guys, how about you simply copy the Marines. Unlike what you just developed, this is useful.