Also, old Class As, old Dress Blues, as well as a combination of certain components from the old Blue and new blue Service Uniform are all authorized during the transition period between now and 2014.
Problem is, dark green and dark blue don’t really go together. It’s like wearing black and brown in the same outfit, or mixing silver and gold jewelry. The Green Berets will have to wear these blue uniforms. They’ll all be committing a terrible fashion faux pas. Just don’t tell them I said that, because I don’t want them to kick my ass.
Because the North won the civil war.
Two things this reminds me of about the Air Force:
- Air Force, like the Army, has Berets, and just as the Army once did, the Air Force limits them to specific groups of people. Security Forces (our MPs) wear Blue berets, Tactical Air Control Party wears black berets, Air-Weather Service Parachutists wear Pewter, Para-Rescue Jumpers wear Maroon, Combat Controllers Scarlet, and Air Force Academy Cadets wear light blue. Everyone else mostly wears flight caps or the BDU/ABU soft caps.
Navy, I’m not sure if I mentioned it previously or not, also has berets, but they only let the girls wear them. 
- Also, in our service dress uniforms (equivalent to the Army Class A’s, we have the option of wearing combat boots, but I dunno if we can blouse them. I’ve only ever seen someone wearing boots with her blues once (it was a very rainy day), and I’ve never seen anyone blouse the slacks.
Dang… apparently from what I’ve been able to Google up, the original intent was to reserve the white shirt for “dress” ocassions (like the AF and CG do) and for “service” use (i.e. officewear) switch from the pale lime shirt to a grey shirt. But, the proposed grey shirts badly failed the wear tests (I guess it would have been embarassing to have to get on the phone to one of the scores of greyshirted armies around the world and ask who does theirs…).
Now, THAT looks just wrong to me: it looks to me like rent-a-cops, not Army. How come virtually every serious army in in the planet has a perfectly good green or khaki or grey Class B shirt and we don’t?
And Heavens to Betsy… the former-combat-unit patch is going to be worn on the waist pocket of the women’s uniform? wha…? Y’know, I’ve read the Army polled its soldiers and they said if the uniform was to change, they wanted it to change to the Blues… but I bet that opinion that was based on how they compared the Blues as Dress Blues, with the AG44 Greens as officewear. The people at Natick seem to be in the process of making the Army Blues as lame as the Greens were alleged to be…
Y’know, this is all part of that idea the Brass seems to have gotten itself wrapped around, to make everyone just wear the ACU (cammies) 24/7 no matter what the time, place, ocassion, or work being done – others have commented on that previously in this and other threads. They’re essentially eliminating any concept of a “stepping out” uniform, partly out of some daft concept of making them feel like full-time “warriors”(*), mostly IMO out of a wish to cut costs. So I suppose the idea is that since for most ocassions that in the 1980s and 90s you would have worn a Class-B, now you’ll be wearing an ACU, you will seldom have to wear this outfit.
(*This apparently also explains why the heck the Navy and AF feel the need to have their own brand of digi-cammies)
In any case I never really understood the lack of love for the AG44 suit, to me (yes, I know it means I’m an oddball) it’s always been just cromulent as a military uniform (hey, compare Gen. McPeak’s AF “business suit” abomination), and yes, I admit I actually did not mind at all the pale-lime shirt. (Though the Army **could ** have resisted the urge to create a badge, tag, ribbon or patch for every conceivable thing in your record and then pin, sew and clip your entire résumé onto the jacket.) Let’s face it, some people will say just about anything short of George C. Scott’s outfit at the opening of Patton “looks like a bus driver suit” to them.
He looked like a NJ state cop to me.
I have to say, though, after stumbling across it accidentally, this version/configuration of the ACU (?) actually doesn’t look half bad at all. If admittedly it does like the Tech Com Uniforms from The Terminator (then again, considering as it’s the year 2008 A.D. and the U.S. Military is deploying increasing numbers of killer robots in combat, this may completely appropriate).
The MG-42 is crappy? Them be fightin’ words. I used to carry its grandson (the MG3 - MG42 rechambered for NATO 7.62x51) - and “crappy” isn’t a word that comes to mind. (“Heavy”, on the other hand, does…)
I have nothing against the army but what the hell are they doing? First the whole army of one campaign. What does that even mean? Those uniforms look terrible, it’s not too late to change your mind guys…although our enemies may die laughing without firing a shot, so it may be a good plan.
As a former officer, I remember that the stipend received was not enough to purchase my first set of dress blues. On top of that, officers were not allowed to Dx old and worn uniforms. We were required to maintain our BDUs ourselves, i.e. purchase new sets as the old ones wore out. We also had to purchase new beach togs (desert camo) uniforms through 2 uniform changes. (I once worked with a 1SG who had three sets of BDUs that were almost white due to being heavily starched for over 10 years, but he being a 1SG I knew not to say anything as a young butterbar.)
Don’t get me started on flak jackets. Or berets. Soldiers work very hard to earn our berets, no matter what color it was. I know many soldiers who were PISSED when they moved to the black berets, especially those from 2/75 Ranger Bat or the SF. Airborne? Meh. You could teach almost anybody to get pushed out of an airplane five times and hit the ground. 
IMO, the class A’s (dress greens) were the best uniforms. You could tell who the badasses were by looking at the combat patches and the stripes on your sleeves - years of service and months in combat service. Seconded by the dress blues, but the blues were alway accompanied by a sally army function which included drinking with your pinky finger extended and putting up with silly formal events and you could never really just unbutton your collar and have a few drinks with your mates. Best behaviour events only, usually with spouses and high up muckity-mucks. Fun times :rolleyes:
And blousing of trousers? Useful in the field - we used to sleep in our boots most of the time. Simply pretentious in garrison. Main reason: Sometimes you had to wake up and hit the ground running if something was going down. The other reason was that you didn’t want to wake up and have the first sensation upon waking up was to have a creepy crawly bite your toes when you put your boots back on. Spiders, scorpions or whatever.
Also, when I was a FISTER (Fire Support Team Officer, aka observer for artillery) while attached to 3-Tank (3/77 Armor), I used to wear tanker boots (straps instead of regular combat boots), the other soldiers used to snort at me, but we held our own wherever we went, so the other arty officers really couldn’t say much to me. Even the Brigade Commander didn’t like it, but he didn’t tell me to stop. I really enjoyed my time with the DATs.
::sigh:: too bad I can’t find a job in civilian life where they pay me to blow shit up. I really liked that. Thought I had found my niche in life.
Huh? What the hell is this? Why would you need to wear cammouflage onboard a ship? If you really need to blend into your machinery why not just dye them the same shade of gray as the rest of the ship???
Maybe they’ll switch to wearing garrison caps? We can call the elite team “the green garrisons”
Not that I’m trying to be vulgar, but in the army, we used to call them “cunt caps”. Never liked 'em. Also called “crayola caps”.
I hear the navy used to call them “piss cutters”. Don’t know what that means, but it brings to mind images of … nevermind…
(green piss cutters? WHY is your piss green??? ::shudder:
They’re called Flight Caps in the Air Force. Handy if you work in an airplane and you need a cover that can just be made to go away when you put on a helmet (or walk around jet engines). Kind of annoying for the rest of us when you need to pull it out of your belt, open it up so your head can fit inside, AND get it to sit securely on your head, all while carrying something in the other hand that you need to take with you.
I kinda wish we had a stiff blues version of the BDU cap, even though it would look a little too French for most tastes. There is always the bus driver caps, but if you wear one of those and you’re not an officer, you just look like a tool.
I for one preferred the “dress utilities”. But the new Navy uniform is a total mess.
That’s what they wore in the Civil War and when they fought the Indians. Green is only a relatively recent thing. I can see the tradition, but I still think it’s retarded.
Helps hide stains better. Really.
But for the most part you won’t wear this aboard a ship, or at least not the full thing. Skittles (the multi-colored flight deck crew you see in Top Gun) will wear the cammie pants with their colored sweater, certain watchstanders like MAs (Master-at-Arms, our MPs) might wear the new cammies, and that’s about it.
Everyone else on the ship wears a flight suit for pilots or LCACers or coveralls. The new cammie uniform was actually part of an attempt by Corporate Navy to eliminate the coveralls, but coveralls are so damn popular we got to rebuff that.
For shore useage I think the new cammies are better than the utilities.
Wow, that’s just… unfortunate. Is it just me, or in the second picture (the one of the chick who looks like they airbrushed out the pistol they had to shove into the back of her head to force her into that tacky outfit) am I really seeing two different colors of blue? There’s the icky lighter blue of the pants with the godsawful wide stripe down the side, but then the jacket is another (and definitely clashing) darker blue? WTF? Blue is a difficult color to match shades on, but that looks like they didn’t even try–it looks like parts from two completely different uniforms mashed together. Tacky, tacky, tacky.
See, this is why they need more gays in the military, then shit like this wouldn’t happen!
Amen sister. OTOH, there just might be some spiteful queens behind this.
Straight people will wear whatever we tell them.
Some background on some of the questions raised above:
The regular US army wore blue, while the state militias tended to adopt grey. As the Civil War loomed onthe horizon (odd figure of speech), the Southern states beefed-up thiure militas, and by the time thw war started, they wre a predominantly gray army - although some CSA untis wore blue and some Northern untis gray. By the time the initial issue wore out, approx 1862, everyone was in the proper color (incl. Johnny Rebs who fought in their homemade work clothes, which is where the term "butternut’ comes from).
Army Green was just as much an “everybody’s special” thing as the general issue of berets which had previously been for special forces. “Rifle Green” was worn by sharpshooters and skirmishers so they could blend in, while the ordinary troops wore British madder red, Austrian white, etc. for indentification and shot smooth-bore muskets.
In the late 1950’s, early 1960’s, the army did wear stiffend, “French kepi” caps (about this time, many of us were kids whose original GI Joe doll came with a plastic version). These were not standard issue, but commanding officres would simply order their men to buy them.
Actually, that was intentional. In the Revolutionary War, the uniform consisted of a dark blue jacket and buff trousers. (See portraits of George Washington.) Later, they changed to blue jacket and white trousers. In the early 1800s, they changed to dark blue jacket and sky blue trousers. It’s been that way ever since. When they started wearing olive drab service uniforms in the early 1900s, the jacket was always darker than the trousers.(You may hear WW2 veterans talking about “pink” trousers. They are referring to the lighter shade of olive drab.) It was not until the 1950s that the Green Uniform went to matching shades.