NYT's Lame Camo Coverage
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)
If you look at the Powerpoint referenced, it's interesting to note that Multicam did very well in the woods but didn't do as well as the others in desert or urban regions. Combine this with the fact that it's more complex to produce and i's a little easier to understand why MC was passed over.
What confuses me is that when I look at the Powerpoint, I can see the broken and dotted line that leads to the ACU. One of the best performers was a tan, grey, and black pattern called Urban Track, and it's notable that only medium tan, black, and medium grey provided acceptable NIR perfromance.
But ACU doesn't quite fit the data that leads up to it. It should've ended up medium grey and tan, accented with little dark spots, and I'm sure that would've worked quite well in many areas; and if said medium grey had a greenish tinge, the ACU could be scary-good.
So why is the ACU comprised of a cream color and pale greys? And where is the experimental data that tests and supports their "no black in nature" conclusion? That's what confuses me.
Posted by: Nate at February 10, 2007 3:14 PM