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Comment by ZanyProgrammer | Hacker News Reader

The ACU itself was an improvement over BDUs, despite the UCP being not good for anything other than hiding in gravel roads. For example, getting rid of the absurdity of boot shining and pressing the same uniform you’re supposed to wear in the field (and EVERYONE starched their BDUs to cardboard consistency for garrison use).

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Starching was truly idiotic, it turns your uniform in to kindling, makes it less breathable, and prevents it from absorbing bug repellents. Completely defeated the purpose of having a utility uniform, looking good is what the service uniform was for. We Marines got the same benefits with better camouflage by adopting the MCCUU. Making all our gear coyote was smart too, it takes on the color of the soil around you once you spend some time on the ground. Although that is true for all gear, it works particularly well with coyote.

I have always found starching clothes hilarious: cloth was soaked in starch to make it easier to cut and sew; you want to wash it out before use to make it comfortable.

The conceit of adding starch back in later to make something look new is already funny; to do it routinely is absurd.

Of course anyone who has been in the military of any country knows "absurd" is a pretty frequent factor.

The effect is more pronounced for someone who has never been in the military, but has had occasion to observe military personnel going about their daily tasks, for the purpose of partially automating their jobs with custom-built software.

I'm not certain that "absurd" is a strong enough word for it.

I was frequently reminded of Tevye the milkman singing "TRADITION!" at the top of his lungs. The only thing worse than participating in absurd and obsolete traditions as an insider is to be forced as an outsider to completely ruin an otherwise rational workflow in order to accommodate them.

If you have ever taken calipers to a software-generated printout, in order to compare it to a paper form that was last revised in 1980, and printed in bulk ever since, you deserve to wear starched underwear.

The purpose of tradition and drill is to encourage people to take action without thinking (this is why the officer/enlisted distinction still exists). In addition, idle hands are the devil's tool, and when you have a bunch of young men doing nothing you need to keep them busy.

True absurdity in the military is an orthogonal axis and runs from, indeed, vestigial rules such as you imply, all the way up to ordering enormous weapons systems the military doesn't even want simply for political reasons.

Kind of a shame we can't think of better busywork for the troops. Sending them out to patch up roads and bridges or cleaning up streams or something. It's such a shame to spend so much time and effort on obsolete and silly uniform regulations.

I'd probably end up turning the Army into a grindy JRPG-style augmented-reality game, and the enlisted would eventually end up referring to civilians as the NPCs.

But we'd also have viable gunblades and dozens of rare uniform crafting recipes, and our military would be well prepared to repel zombie pandemics, space-alien invasions, and goblin sieges, as well as to defeat S-class daikaiju.

...So there is something to be said for letting experienced professional soldiers run the military. They might know what they're doing behind the facade of repetitive busywork, like Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san karate. Or they might not. It's hard to tell from where I sit. A lot of the budget is not freely auditable by the public, and I have certainly seen firsthand a very small portion of it totally wasted on absolute nonsense.

We do, but in other countries.

I always liked the pictures of it blending into couches: https://havokjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ACU-couc...

i was in the 70's era with baggy solid green fatigues and they you usually got one or two wears out of them before they needed to be starched again. They looked good for about the first hour after new starch and then terrible. Apparently there was no need for camo during the cold war.

that said, I did see that Avengers End Game got the 70's fatigues right. And also the hideous baseball cap we had to wear.

"Apparently there was no need for camo during the cold war."

Well, you were going to be fighting in western Europe and living in NBCW suits all the time anyway....

Of course, there is the idiocy of using Velcro for field uniforms. Most of those patches aren't going to get swapped out all that often.

I heard from a military friend that the Velcro was useful for being able to discard patches in case it looked like they might be captured, so as to deny information to the enemy.

I'm skeptical that there's much utility there, but maybe someone better informed than me can chime in.

It's also (marginally) useful for saving costs and time from sewing and having to purchase badges and patches for each uniform. This was pretty helpful while deployed IMO, since you'd just get new uniforms and could immediately put on your nametapes and patches.

Velcro pockets, though... those were terrible. Both in durability (their "grip" would weaken over time) and noise.

I was at Benning in the circa 2004 era and in my unit, we expressly forbid starching. However, that was definitely not true for many other units.

not everyone.

You need to be pretty close to tell if a BDU is dirty or stained. That has advantages.

The biggest pain with BDUs was keeping the sleeves rolled up properly.

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