THE $5 BILLION UNIFORM IS NO MORE
The U.S. Army’s digital Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) uniform is so “last week.” Starting Oct. 1, all soldiers are sporting the green-and-brown Operational Camouflage Pattern uniform, or OCP. It’s a throwback camo.
The UCP pattern had been tested and found to provide better concealment than 10 other patterns, before it was brought onboard in 2004 with great fanfare and at great cost. But it was poorly received by some soldiers in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan who said it just didn’t blend well enough in the desert environment. It was better suited for woodlands.
There were a couple of problems with the pixelated pattern. One, it didn’t incorporate any black, and that made it appear flat, and easier to spot.
But the bigger issue was the optical effect that occurs when the human eye sees a number of colors and patterns as a single color. Known as isoluminance, the defect in the pattern resulted from the numerous issues resulting from pixelation.
[Read: The history of invisibility]
The Army has been transitioning into the OCP for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2014, when the Army announced that OCP would replace all UCP uniforms by October, 2019.
It was a $5 billion uniform experiment that had come shortly after the U.S. Marines moved to digital-designed camouflage battle uniforms.
By 2016, appropriators in Congress had seen enough and began working on provisions to prevent the Defense Department from developing new service-specific camouflage, and new rules were soon developed by the Defense Department to address further textile waste.
[Read ‘The $5 Billion Army Camouflage That Failed to Hide Its Soldiers]
