The irresponsibly stupid and dangerous camouflage patterns of the U.S. military

You'd think the military would want uniform patterns that keep its members safe. And yet somehow, "distinctiveness" has trumped safety

Gen. David Petraeus' old uniform, which was the upgraded "MultiCam" pattern.
(Image credit: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

When the Marine Corps selected a digital pattern for its combat uniform in 2002, the U.S. military as a whole seemed to fracture, with each branch wandering aimlessly in a bizarre search for sartorial identity. It's been a long, strange trip since. So let's take a brief look at the camouflage patterns of the U.S. military, and the sorry stories of their adoptions.

Universal Camouflage Pattern (U.S. Army)

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David W. Brown

David W. Brown is coauthor of Deep State (John Wiley & Sons, 2013) and The Command (Wiley, 2012). He is a regular contributor to TheWeek.com, Vox, The Atlantic, and mental_floss. He can be found online here.