U.S. Army Spent $5 Billion on Failed Camouflage Because it Wanted to Look Cooler than Marines

This is a picture of my great great great grandfather, when he was a confederate soldier during the Civil War.  This is the uniform he wore...

When my grandfather was in the Army, during World War II, he wore a uniform like this...

My father served in the Army in the early 60's, he wore a uniform like this (he was not Elvis Presley)...

Here's a photo from basic training in 1987, at Fort Knox, at the time I was in the Army...

And then there's this story...

The U.S. Army is set to replace its 'Universal Camouflage Pattern' less than a decade after it was first introduced at a cost of $5billion. 

The design, which combines grey and green blotches in a pixellated pattern, was supposed to disguise soldiers equally well in desert and in more temperate terrain.But critics claim that the camouflage did not work properly in either environment - and some have even suggested that its main purpose was to make the Army appear 'more cool' than the Marines.

The problem was apparently that Army commanders were envious of a cutting-edge new camouflage recently developed by the Marine Corps which incorporated pixels rather than the more traditional waves of colour.So officials from PEO Soldier, which is responsible for procuring equipment, ordered developers to adapt their new grey-green colour scheme into the pixel pattern - even though experts argued this compromise would leave soldiers vulnerable in battle. 

'Brand identity trumped camouflage utility,' according to military journalist Eric Graves. 'That's what this really comes down to: we can't allow the Marine Corps to look more cool than the Army.' 

The results, according to some of the soldiers who had to wear the new uniform after it was introduced in 2004, was a disaster.

'Essentially, the Army designed a universal uniform that universally failed in every environment,' an Army specialist who served in Iraq told The Daily. 'The only time I have ever seen it work well was in a gravel pit.'He continued: 'As a cavalry scout, it is my job to stay hidden. Wearing a uniform that stands out this badly makes it hard to do our job effectively. If we can see our own guys across a distance because of it, then so can our enemy.'

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