Sept. 8, 2004
By Tom Vanderbilt
After years of study—and the field deployment of thousands of prototype uniforms in Operation Enduring Freedom—the U.S. Army recently unveiled a new uniform, dubbed the Army Combat Uniform, or ACU. It will become standard-issue for all deployed troops in the fall of 2005. You can count on one hand the number of major uniform upgrades undertaken by the Army in the last century, so this sweeping sartorial redesign begs further analysis. What does the ACU tell us about the state of soldiering?
The new uniform is far removed from the idea of ceremonial military dress or leather-booted authoritarianism that once dominated military dress; rather than constricting and constraining, it gives and breathes and is somewhat shapeless and untucked. The polished, spit-shined black boots have been replaced by suede, no-polish-required tan desert boots; unlike uniforms of yore, it need not be dry-cleaned (which saves soldiers not just money, but time). The design energy applied to the ACU went mostly into making a uniform that would be invisible to foes but visible to comrades. Even a ceremonial detail like the traditional U.S. flag emblem has been khaki-ized into muted tan-and-blacks on some uniforms; no longer a symbol intended to be recognizable across the battlefield, it's an infrared feedback element visible only to those equipped to see it.
Making the ACU as invisible as possible required developing an entirely new "digital" camouflage pattern, derived from the Marine Corps' so-called "MARPAT" camo scheme, which was launched in 2001. MARPAT is pixilated—bit-mapped on a computer, and then "printed" directly onto nylon. The effect is as if one had interrupted, at less than full resolution, the downloading of a picture of a traditionally camouflaged soldier, the stripes and whorls dissipating into pointillist bits. Unlike the old camo, digital camo suggests shapes and colors without actually being shapes and colors—like visual white noise. While it may serve a hunter well to appear to be part of a tree, a contemporary soldier needs to be on the move, and so his camouflage must help him blend into the "flow of space."
http://slate.msn.com/id/2106359/