I teased you all yesterday and here's the short story I got out of Sgt. Maj. Chandler's comments yesterday on the issue of MultiCam:
But during an interview with military bloggers on June 20, Chandler admitted that in addition to the beret complaints, he was hearing that Soldiers wanted to do away with their current camo uniforms and adopt the pattern now being worn by their counterparts in Afghanistan."A lot of the Soldiers brought up that they just want to have the MultiCam, or Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage pattern, as the standard design for all uniforms," Chandler said.
The real interesting issue here is that with a wave of the wand the Army ditched the black beret and Velcro name tapes -- no study, no uniform board mulling -- just an edict from on high. This was meant to show Joes their top leadership was listening.
So why not the same with MultiCam/OCP? Kit Up! is all in favor of the Army's camo study and respects greatly the work of PEO Soldier and their sincerity in the effort. But it's starting to look weird that the service is going through all this to maybe find four patterns that might work in varied environments that could possibly be fielded later this decade (until someone in Congress gets the sticker shock), while all along they've been fielding a pattern that works in the varied environments of Afghanistan (woodland/farmland, desert, mountain) and has shown in three Army studies that it does pretty darned well in all zones?
And oh by the way, the troops love it and feel safer operating in it. As Chandler said in the interview "our uniforms are part of who we are." Why not give 'em what they want -- they're already getting it...
