THE United States Army’s combat uniforms will soon be covered in a new camouflage. Military.com, a news website, recently reported that the army will wear a pattern called Scorpion, which the service has owned since 2002. This brings to an end the army’s long, costly use of its “universal” camouflage pattern (UCP), which was designed to work anywhere but which soldiers complain works nowhere. This flawed camouflage cost the army millions to create, and then at least $5 billion in uniforms and equipment. Replacing all this kit could cost another $4 billion over five years, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Why is the army’s approach to camouflage so wasteful?



Before 2002 nearly every American serviceman had a choice of two camouflage patterns: greenish or beige-ish. But the country’s already-generous defence spending was supersized after the attacks of September 11th 2001, enabling all sorts of costly projects. Now every service of the armed forces has at least one camouflage pattern, and some have several. Years of camouflage one-upsmanship have cost the Defence Department more than $12m in research and development, and billions in uniforms and equipment. “Objectively speaking it would be better for everyone to wear the same uniforms,” says Timothy O’Neill, a retired lieutenant-colonel and camouflage expert. “But the marines don't want to look like army, the army doesn't want to look like marines and no one wants to look like the squids [navy]”. Just managing the stock and supply of so many different combat uniforms costs the armed forces tens of millions of dollars. Most damningly, these numbers don’t include the high cost of outfitting an entire service with an ineffective pattern, which the army managed to do when it chose the UCP in 2004.

No one can explain just how the army chose a bum pattern. The UCP wasn’t a finalist in multi-year trials, so many presume that a senior official picked it at the last minute because it looked cool. But battlefield soldiers noticed this mistake immediately, and swiftly complained that their uniforms turned them into targets. The army outfitted soldiers in Afghanistan in better camo called MultiCam in 2010 (spending more than $38.8m on replacement gear in 2010 and 2011), and began costly trials for a new pattern. But complaints from soldiers alerted Congress that something might be wrong with the uniform-procurement process. The GAO confirmed these suspicions in 2012 with a damning report. Congress has directed the Defence Department to rein in uniform spending; the 2014 Defence Authorisation Act makes it impossible for a service to introduce a new uniform unless it is adopted by everyone. But this wouldn’t prevent a service from dusting off an old pattern, which the army evidently now plans to do with Scorpion, which was first developed in 2002.

This choice brings to an end a multi-year, multi-million-dollar search for a better pattern. But some are already wondering if the army is making another mistake. Both Scorpion and MultiCam were created by Crye Precision, a Brooklyn-based manufacturer, and many assumed the army would stick with MultiCam, as the pattern tests well and has proven effective in Afghanistan. But talks with Crye Precision to scale up the relationship reportedly broke down over costs earlier this year. (Despite the armed forces' investment in research and development, the intellectual property of camo patterns is owned by the manufacturers.) Scorpion did not test as well in trials, but the licence for the pattern is presumably more affordable. Remarkably, the Defence Department lacks a single office for developing and procuring the best possible uniforms for all American troops. And that is why soldiers in the field are often outfitted differently, unsure which camouflage offers the best way to blend in.

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