No. The respondant to that said that the Army wore dress greens, not dress blues. I showed that the Army does wear dress blues. You and he are both wrong.
No adulation necessary 
, but I was being a tad sarcastic in my attempt to respond to those who are put off by military folks who are wearing their work clothes. They are work clothes, that’s all. People who read all kinds of symbolism or statement on the part of the person wearing such clothes are being a little overly emotional, IMO.
The trend over the past couple of decades has been to streamline and simplify our nation’s military uniforms. This has been done mostly as an efficiency and cost cutting measure. For example, very soon (if not already) the US Army enlisted man will have only two uniforms… the ACU (which is replacing the BDU… it’s what you’re describing as combat uniforms) which has a new digitized camo pattern, is somewhat loose, no collar, lots of velcro and is designed to be worn under the newest body armor. This is the uniform that is issued for the vast majority of daily wear duties and what you’ll see offbase from now on in all but the most formal occasions. The other uniform is the new dress Blue uniform which is replacing all of the other various grades of dress uniforms that were available. It used to be that there was a dress green, a dress blue and a ‘class A’ green for less formal duties (what you saw recruiters in usually) and other variations depending on what time in particular we’re talking about. The Navy is streamlining too… I think it makes good sense, personally and I have no problem whatsoever seeing somebody in uniform going about their day.
Lets see if I can explain this clearly. As I mentioned before and and lokij just reiterated over the last 20 years or so, maybe more the army has been streamlining their uniform choices. The camoflague uniform has become the general work uniform for both field duty and garrison duty. Class A uniforms are rarely used except during formal occasions. No government plot to send the population a message.
As to your first part, you are not comprehending properly. It is not a matter of if they have not choice or all the choice in the world. There is no army regulation stating you can not wear your uniform at the mall, in a restaurant etc (except for regulations against appearing at political rallies and such). However, local commanders can impose restrictions to their own troops. Like I mentioned earlier, when I was stationed at Ft Hood it was not unusual to see someone at the mall in uniform. At the same time friends of mine at Ft Bragg told me that they would get in trouble for stopping for a gallon of milk on their way home if they lived off post. No contridiction. Just local rules that differ from place to place.
Great Lakes, IL, a NW suburb of Chicago, has Recruit Training Command (Navy bootcamp). That’d be my guess.
I pay my salary, too.
For the Norfolk area, if you see someone wearing camo pushing a cart around the grocery store doing their normal shopping, they’re wrong. We can pick up basic necessities or stop for gas, but it’s meant to be worn off base only to-and-from work. That applies to all of the actual working unforms (utilities, flightsuits, etc), but those aren’t particularly “ima go kill some terrists” intimidating. How the policy will change if/when they roll out the new grey/blue digital camo stuff I don’t know.
As for the Army band…
For all we know, someone in the band lost their luggage and their dress uniform couldn’t be replaced properly in time. Can’t have one guy in a different uniform, so everybody wears whatever uniform that could get replaced in time. Or somebody in charge screwed up and nobody backed them up by questioning it. Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. Nobody’s trying to send the civilians a message.
My grandfather likes to talk about how things are different today then when he was in the military.
Maybe the policy changed because there are far more people living off base these days then there were in the past.
Honestly, when I see someone in BDUs eating lunch, pumping gas, or picking up a few groceries it doesn’t cross my mind that they’re being discourteous in the least. That’s kind of a far out wacky belief you’ve got there.
Marc
The thing is, BDUs are ugly. The new digital camo suits are even uglier. I have no real problem with soldiers picking up a gallon of milk in them (though I’d prefer if the PTB encouraged them to wear civvies/dress uniforms), but I despise seeing soldiers on duty in civilian areas wearing BDUs.
For starters, it seems disrespectful, like wearing a jogging suit–it might be the most comfortable/practical, but I’d like to see the brass put a little more emphasis on appearance. Precicely because we’re at war, and an unpopular war at that, I’d think the military would want it’s personell looking as sharp as possible. Instead, they keep making the basic uniform look more and more like something that should be accompanied by deer urine and a six-pack.
Secondly, I agree that it gives the appearance too much of a combat zone. I don’t care what these uniforms are actually used for–to most civilians without much military experience, camo is what you wear to shoot things. When I see a soldier wearing a dress uniform, I feel proud and grateful. When I see a soldier in camo, I feel a little uncomfortable. The soliers on duty at airports after 9-11 especially made me feel like I was walking into a war zone. My purely gut-level reaction was to feel less safe (just as I would if I saw people in hazmat suits or combat helmets), in contrast to how I think I would have felt if they’d been in dressier uniforms.
Finally, I think looking sharper, at least when around civilians would surely be good for morale. If I were on waiting to be shipped out at an airport, I’d much rather be in a dress uniform, however uncomfortable, than in BDUs. As a civilian I try to wear at least a button-up shirt instead of my usual tshirt when I travel, just so the airline attendants treat me a little nicer. And in case a cute woman sits next to me. (But she never does.)
On a purely aesthetic level I agree with everything you’ve said. But I’m one of those people that watches old Twilight Zone episodes and thinks “why can’t people still dress like that?!?!”
One thing that has been bugging me for a couple years is seeing soldiers, officers as well as enlisted people, in airports dressed in BDUs. As old Army and ex-Army, that simply offend a sense of propriety. In the old days – say as late as 1985 when I last followed the guideon– commercial travel was in office uniform, greens or khakis.
Fatigues and later BDUs were a work and field uniform that could be worn during the commute from home to work and for stops in route, but deliberately going out among the civilian public in working uniform was frowned on.
I suppose that we old curmudgeons should have seen this coming when the BDUs came in as a supplemental uniform and then it was announced that the cammo uniform was to be starched. It may well be a cost saving to the government to eliminate the office uniform, but I for one regret the loss of the Army Green uniform with its flash of brass and glitter of decorations. I hate to think that a soldier has to either look like a turkey hunter or an extra in a John Ford cavalry movie. Are the other services doing the same thing? Is there to be no more Air Force Blue, Navy Blue or Marine Corps Khaki uniform?
It is not just cost saving for the government. I haven’t been on active duty for a while but we didn’t get the uniforms for free. We got a clothing allowance and were expected to buy what we needed. It never covered everything that was needed. When you start adding office uniforms as well as dress uniforms that makes a lot more money. I have not travelled in BDU/ACUs except as a unit going on deployment. If they changed the travel uniform from Class As to ACU, thank god. You may have looked sharp when you started the trip but by the end rumpled is the best you could hope for. Nothing looks worse then a rumpled soldier in Class As. By the time I got from Germany to Ft Hood I looked like hell and I was uncomfortable the whole way.
BDU’s is what the Army and Air Force call cammies. Marines have regulations in place about wearing a utilities (cammies) off base. Exceptions can be made if you’re stopping for something essential, but you’re still going to catch some hell if someone sees you. I’ve had to skip trips to lunch or settle for drive-thru restaurants because of this. Service uniforms are approved for wear anywhere.
It bothers me a little to see soldiers or airman running around town in cammies. It seems unprofessional to me, but that may be just my prejudices.
Yes, the Navy recently unveiled their new work and service uniforms replacing many older options (the work uniform is a digitized blue/gray camo design), I think Airforce options were always a bit more streamlined compared the older Army and Navy services who maintained old traditions in the uniforms they wore. The Marine Corps, however, is keeping their uniforms as far as I know, at least in the number of options they have… though that could change rapidly as the smallest service branch.
It almost causes me physical pain to agree with a jarhead about something, but I agree with you completley. When I see them running around town in fatigues, it does look unprofessional.
From what I’ve been able to glean off various sources, there is something of a streamlining going on in many of the services since the turn of this century. Anyway since BDU came in, as you point out, the Army seems most inclined to have the field uniform authorized for just about any situation it can. Besides, as the Army issues the recruit one green (or, henceforth, blue) suit, but four BDUs/ACUs, it’s pretty inevitable.
The Marines modernized their field uniform but retained their other orders of dress, including the khaki-shirtsleeve “summer” uniforms. Then again, they don’t have to remind themselves they’re “warriors”, they know they are.
As mentioned, the Navy is going to adopt a hazegray version of digi-camo as “working utilities” and a khaki “service” uniform for “office”-type environments for** all ** grades; this apparently means the elimination of service-blue and service-white “shirtsleeve” uniforms but NOT of the dress blues and whites. Again, Naval tradition weighs heavily towards proper dress for the proper ocassion. The Coast Guard adopted the Operational Duty Uniform (blue fatigues) some years back but AFAIK they have kept the regulation that you may wear it incidental to coming or going or when performing actual duty, but not to formal or dressy ocassions or as stepping-out wear.
The Army has adopted the ACU as standard everyday duty wear, as was the BDU; and the predicted change in the dress uniforms will apparently work as follows:
- Army Blue suit with grey shirt and tie and beret/garrison cap = Class A (formerly the green suit, equiv. civilian business suit)
- Lose the jacket and tie, short sleeve shirt = Class B “summer” dress
- Switch to white shirt, fancier pin-ons, and peaked cap: “Dress Blues”; switch to bow tie for evenings.
BTW that sequence of what you’ll do with the Army Blue uniform is what the Air Force and Coast Guard have been doing with their single blue suit-and-tie uniforms for quite some time. (BTW, when the Army ditched the khakis and made their “summer” Class-B be just “Class-A minus jacket and tie” in the 80s, it was following the Air Force’s lead.) The Air Force, meanwhile, is now going to also adopt their own version of digi-camo AND alter the Blue Suit yet again.
One thing that we sometimes forget, is that “once upon a time”, for the lower ranks there would be ONE everyday-wear Army service uniform, that would become “dress” by cleaning and pressing, putting on the coat and pinning fancy braid and brass to it, and wearing a nicer hat; while it became “combat” by loosening some buttons, switching to a field jacket, putting on appropriate headgear, adding boots and the slings/belts/straps to carry weapons and supplies. The soldier at a dinner event in town in a stepping-out uniform would be wearing pants and a shirt that he could expect to wear in the field. Even when there arose distinct combat/work/service/formal uniforms, the latter two forms were usually inspired upon what had been the fighting/working uniforms at an earlier time of history.
It does not bother me at all to see the soldiers in ACUs walking about incidentally – although I would have to admit that from a mutual-morale POV it would be nice if the Army could afford to have something better looking than the ACU and more practical than the Blues for just everyday use – and as for the OP, hey they were on duty, it’s a duty uniform. But one thing that has struck me as odd is how it often seems that being in uniform, any uniform, seems to void any situational formality consideration. I have seen people appearing at public hearings in ACU, when I know the soldier DOES own something that is the equivalent of the businesswear the civilian dress code requires in such ocassions. I don’t think Ollie North would have looked quite as impressive standing before the committee in MARPAT as he did in his Greens, y’know… 
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I don’t have a chip on my shoulder. I’m making the same argument that others have made about the taxes. I pay taxes and have an equal opinion. My point is that if someone wants me to take off my uniform, and I want to leave it on, I win. That’s all. As for saying “piss off”, that’s only if the OP were to openly berate me or something, obviously.
As for surrendering rights…no, we don’t. First amendment rights still apply. It’s the officers that can’t say anything they want. They can if they’re out of uniform though. Same thing goes for assembly. I can protest the war all I want, so long as it’s out of uniform. That’s not a “freedom of assembly” restriction, that’s a “disrespect of the uniform”-type issue. And that’s not really different from the civilian world. Think of nondisclosure agreements. Isn’t that a “Freedom of Speech” restriction? Not really.
For clarity, the uniforms all have different names. In the Army, the green-black-brown camos are called BDUs (Battle-dress-uniforms). DCUs are desert-camo-unis, those tan ones you see. The new ones that are digital are called ACUs (Army Combat Uniforms).
Jimson is right. The uniform of the day is called the “duty uniform”. The combat and battle-dress part is just a name. The army has gone through many motto-shifts to make us seem more warrior-like recently. It’s just an ad campaign really. Don’t link the ‘combat uniform’ with ‘combat’. Instead, link it with ‘duty’.
Lastly, “killing people” is a miniscule portion of what we do. Combat missions cannot compare to the amount of missions we do for humanitarian aid…even in Iraq. Do not think for a second that your military tosses Geneva Conventions out the window. There are strict rules for conduct, even with the enemy. Thinking of Abu Ghraib? Those guys are in jail now, like other criminals.
I would never argue that people shouldn’t wear military uniforms in public on my account, but I’ll admit it makes me nervous when I see them. My university campus has lots of ROTC people - I’ve even had classmates and students come to class in dress uniforms as well as camo suits.
All I can say is that when I see soldiers walking along otherwise peaceful streets, especially in large groups (which does happen, sometimes even marching or running), it scares me a little.
I would recommend, then, that you take it up with their commander in chief. We are fortunate in the US in that the military is the instrument of policy, not the setter of that policy. In a lot of unfortunate countries, the military is both.
But now we’re sliding into GD territory
I live right next to Ft. Benning, and either the base commanders are incredibly lax, or there are a lot of soldiers breaking the regs. When my husband and brother and father were in the military (not at the same time 
) the rules were simple. Go off base, change clothes.
Now, however, I don’t know what the rules are, but I see boys (and girls) in BDUs all over the place, all the time. Only when it’s time for boot graduation do I ever see dress uniforms, unless it’s a recruiter. Even at events where you expect the nice dress uniforms, all I see is cammies.
Are you sure that is Corps-wide? 
After all in the Army and AF, it is up to the Base commander. But the Corps is much smaller so it makes more sense for them to have one set of regs for everyone I guess.
And it is not unprofessional, it’s orders. How can following orders be
“unprofessional”? The Army doesn’t even have another uniform to wear, except the dress.
Like I said and DrDeth reiterated, they have not issued a true “intermediate” uniform since the early 80s; a Class B (so to speak “business casual” or office-wear) uniform has been in use since, consisting simply of the AG uniform in shirtsleeves, but ever since the “Army of One” thing, the ACU/BDU approved wear has been expanding to replace Class B for many applications now, a bit too enthusiastically IMO but that’s the Army for you. This is mainly an inventory and cost saving measure (you have to professionally dry-clean and press the dress uniforms, at soldier’s expense; the fatigues can be more cheaply laundered), but it does also have a tie-in with an “image” strategy (what I call “egalitarization”) intended to remind them that they ARE ALL in the Army, ALL the time, and no less so because you’re the XO of Beancounting Command teleconferencing from an air-conditioned office in DC or you’re at the San Antonio Riverwalk attacking an enchilada platter. Just like the thing with everyone getting black berets.
In a way, the Army* is* adapting to the times with this (some would say surrendering). A few decades ago, people did not travel or go out on the town or attend church in their fieldwork clothes; but now, that’s almost welcome, compared with what some people dare wear in public. Very few civilian venues now impose a dress code beyond “no shoes/no shirt, no service”, and let’s face it, a soldier’s BDU/ACU will be neat and clean and matched and, heck, it even includes a hat. Doesn’t hurt that these days it would take a foolhardy management person to publicly say to someone in ANY version of the military uniform, “young man, please step out, we have a strict dress code”… I still feel, personally, that if other services can manage it, the Army should reconsider their vision, if only because slicker stepping-out uniforms are a better “advertisement”; but if they feel they can spend the money on better things, that’s their call.
And really, a bunch of guys in uniform walking down the street? No prob, if they are legit Army/ROTC. *Armed, *then I’d worry what’s up…