The $5 Billion Camo Snafu

[lafinjack]

Comments

[poetic_pixie_13]

Obviously this'll save lives and is a Good Thing.

But I think y'all would save more lives and money if you didn't, like, invade other countries and spend so much on weapons and stuff to show that yours is bigger. You could even use that money for stuff like healthcare! And education! And eliminating poverty! (Also infrastructure, cause it's sexy, idgaf.)

But that would require all those white dudes in the government who've never actually served a day in their life to get their heads out of their asses.

[lafinjack]

But I think y'all would save more lives and money if you didn't, like, invade other countries and spend so much on weapons and stuff to show that yours is bigger.

Man, if only.

[alryssa]

Also infrastructure, cause it's sexy, idgaf

Suspension bridges? Total turn on, baby.

[skellington1]

Yeah, some of us have suggested that, but the idea never seems to take.

[kitbug]

I always hated the pixelated design. IT'S NOT CAMO.

[kaelstra]

I don't think that it's pixelated was the problem, as the pixels are meant to create sort of visual "noise" and make it harder for people to be seen, I think it's just THAT kind in particular with those colors were a really, really bad idea. The patterns have to be right, too. But the pixel idea itself is fine, when done correctly. This just wasn't done correctly.

[miischelle]

I believe that the pixelated pattern is also supposed to work better against digital surveillance.
I could be totally off, but it's what I was told when griping to a Marine about the change in camo years ago...

[baked_goldfish]

Yep, the cadpat that people are oohing and ahhing about up the page is digital. Marpat was based on that.

[tabaqui]

It makes me furious to know that the people making the camo were totally unhappy at being told to rush it, and that for *eight years* this caused issues and deaths and it was just...not addressed.

Somebody should be in jail.

[skellington1]

This is pretty fascinating. Not the deadly bureaucratic snafu -- that's just crap I expect from a large organization, taken up to eleven with the risk to lives -- but the actual camouflage. I'd love to see the research on pixelated versus non pixelated patterns in the same colors, if it exists -- I was always confused by the pixelated camo, because it seemed to me that we'd be more likely to notice the underlying geometric shapes (all those right angles) than a more organic pattern, even if the geometry is small and random. The Kryptek examples someone linked to above make more intuitive sense, with both diffuse and hard shapes creating an illusion of depth -- but intuition doesn't always bear out.

The quote about branding is truly astounding.

It’s worth noting that, flawed as it was, the universal pattern did solve the problem of mismatched gear, said Eric Graves, editor of the military gear publication Soldier Systems Daily, adding that the pattern also gave soldiers a new-looking uniform that clearly identified the Army brand.

[alryssa]

Actually, when you talk about hard-line geometric shapes, it makes me think of the naval Dazzle camouflage used during WWI and WWII -

[layweed]

Naval camoflauge is amusing (and confusing) as hell. But yeah, it was designed to confuse the enemy, much in the same way zebra stripes do.

[alryssa]

I could spend hours looking at old photographs of these designs. Hard to believe the Olympic spent some time looking like this.

Semi-related (in a 'hey-its-the-military' sense)

[sankaku_atama]

Fun fact: Back when the Blackbird was first being introduced to the world at large, its designation was RS-71 Blackbird. LBJ went on national TV (I think it was Johnson) and called it the 'SR-71'. Instead of releasing a correction to the news channels, the military decided not to correct their Commander-In-Chief, and decided it would be more expedient to go back and re-write and redesign all of the blueprints, diagrams, tooling, dies, castings, and anything else that might have 'RS-71' on it to read what Johnson said.

This decision to relabel thousands of pieces of paper and equipment cost several million dollars. In 1960's cash.

Yeah, the military's higher-ups can make some odd decisions, and its usually the lower-downs that take the brunt of the screwup.

That being said, I'm glad they're finally getting the camo patterns changed.

It's on Wikipedia, it MUST be true.

[lafinjack]

"Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay preferred the SR (Strategic Reconnaissance) designation and wanted the RS-71 to be named SR-71. Before the July speech, LeMay lobbied to modify Johnson's speech to read SR-71 instead of RS-71. The media transcript given to the press at the time still had the earlier RS-71 designation in places, creating the story that the president had misread the aircraft's designation."

Re: It's on Wikipedia, it MUST be true.

[sankaku_atama]

Well, my source came from the book Skunk Works, the memoirs about the aerospace development teams that designed the SR-71, the U-2, the stealth bomber, etc. The way the story is presented there is that Johnson misread it; I had never heard about LeMay's involvement.