The Army Made A $5 Billion Mistake Choosing Its Uniforms

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-army-admits-it-made-a-big-5-billion-mistake-choosing-its-uniforms-2012-6



The U.S. Marine Corps has long been known for doing more with less; smaller, more agile, and quick to react, it actually employed that ability when hunting for new uniforms in 2002.
Erik German at The Daily tells the story of the Marines and the Army's uniform selections, mentioning a conversation he had with a textile technologist that shows the Marines flexibility and the Army's cumbersome bureaucracy.
The Marines went to their sniper school at Quantico, Va., and told a couple of their guys to find a good camouflage color for the new uniform pattern. A group of snipers went to the local Home Depot and found the main base color in the Ralph Lauren section of the paint department. The color now called Coyote Brown went into the pattern of their very successful and well-loved MARPAT uniform pattern.
This was also around the time the Army was sending its troops to Iraq with uniforms and body armor in a variety of mismatched patterns that, in effect, left U.S. soldiers wearing a target for the enemy to fire upon.


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