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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

It appears that someone circumnavigated the scientific process and forced UCP in.

That would be whoever benefitted financially from the decision to fuck our soldiers over.

Having worked (as a civilian contractor) for the military it's equally plausible that the decision was screwed up for other reasons. High up decision makers that "trust their gut" over what the data tells them or who arbitrarily decide that a certain pattern looks silly to them.

It's absolutely not intuitive that the digital looking blocky camouflage patterns [1] are going to perform better than the blob style camo patterns they replaced.

1 - https://www.businessinsider.com/why-militaries-have-strange-...

Hanlon's razor strikes again.

Commanders have wide discretion and it's part of the decentralized command mindset. They can sometimes make such decisions on no more than "I think this pattern looks cooler than that pattern"

Yep. But it depends on the relationship the commander has with his or her superior officer. Some commanders are burdened with having to justify every single decision they make. Others have basically free reign to lead how they see fit (for better or worse) as long as they stay within the regulations.

Berets.

Seeing as UCP is owned by the US government, I'm very curious to hear who could have financially benefited from its selection. If anything, HyperStealth here is the one with the financial motivation seeing as their US4CES pattern was not selected.

I mean, there is an obvious (gigantic) budgetary and logistical advantage of having one form of camouflage for all situations over more than one.

If it works, of course, which it doesn't.

Much more likely is that multiple entities just wanted something done quickly and didn't follow all the right procedures the way they should have been.

Don't presume malice when incompetence will do.

Are these people in prison yet?

What law was broken?

idk, but it seems to undermine national security.

Maybe in here somewhere, "Various statutes supplement the provisions of Chapter 37 to criminalize activities that jeopardize the national defense or national security."

IANAL ;)

I'm sure the senior military officials pushing UCP through were doing so to intentionally handicap the organization they spent their entire life working for. Rather than just making a mistake based on overestimating their own knowledge. If that's criminalized, all of HN is going behind bars.

thats a weird take, very defensive. But, since youre sure about it I guess everyone should be too.

I'm sure no one is trying to destroy US democracy either or stage insurrections, etc. oh wait...

If I had to guess, I'd say it was intentional and all about money. That could make it illegal. Even if they didn't intend to lose in combat, it still gave US soldiers a handycap.

So to sum things up, you're suggesting that either US army officials in 2004 chose UCP to weaken the US military in preparation for a fascist coup in 2020 OR they chose a US gov owned pattern over commercial patterns to make money (somehow)? And you're calling my response defensive and weird lmao

They said their guess is "money". This looks like your trying to put words in someone elses mouth. The examples of corruption in government seems to be just that, examples.

Im not sure why you try to act like they all need to be tied together somehow?

Seem pretty defensive & weird.

Alright so to avoid putting words in anyone's mouth, please outline how corruption could have caused the US to fast track a pattern it developed itself rather than one of the superior commercial patterns that they would have had to pay royalties on.

I was deployed to CENTCOM in the USAF when these uniforms went into service. Worked closely with Army...If memory serves they were flammable and poorly tested (circa 2006). I can remember the Army units I talked to were having major problems. So if you had the misfortune of getting deployed outside the wire and had to wear those things I could see why you might be a little keyed up 15+ years later.

You're assuming malicious intent, multiple co-conspirators, and illegal action.

None of that information is available to you.

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