Battlefield Fashion

There are quite a few things I’ve come to like about being deployed. Most of them have to do with the shared set of common experiences and the sense of community you get in a deployed environment. To go along with that though, the ridiculous political decisions tend to be magnified beyond all belief. I talked about some of those things in my Iraq e-mails, and this place definitely has its share of stupidity. Most recently has been the Air Force’s decision to issue new uniforms, essentially to keep up with the Army. I’ll caution up front that this is probably going to be a big rant session, and that there’s a good chance a few of you will think I’m making a huge deal out of nothing. There may be some truth to that, but there’s also some truth to the fact that even during a war, people don’t have anything better to worry about than whether the media will recognize me as an Air Force member when they take my picture. Bear with the history lesson; I think it’s worth giving you the background on this whole sad saga.

Several years ago the Army developed the Army Combat Uniform (ACU), in order to replace the older Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) and Desert Combat Uniform (DCU) that most of the services shared for quite a few years. BDUs were the woodland green and brown camouflage pattern that most people are probably familiar with. The ACU is a grayish-green digital camouflage pattern that’s a substantial change from BDUs in both appearance and functionality. I was skeptical of the pattern initially, but it’s surprisingly versatile and works well in urban and remote environments. Most importantly, the ACU is functional. It’s not designed for style, and it’s not the type of uniform that’s likely to be turned into an inspection item by an overzealous commander. There are pockets on the sleeves that would probably prevent a crease, and the boots are rough-side-out tan leather that doesn’t need to be polished or really maintained at all. All of the pockets also have Velcro rather than buttons, something else I was initially skeptical of but am now a convert to, since the Velcro and the ergonomic pockets actually allow things to be accessible, and although Velcro wears out eventually, it’s a lot less likely to fall off or be torn off than a bunch of buttons.

The reason I think I can speak intelligently about the Army’s uniform is that I’ve been wearing it for the past five and a half months, as you may have noticed from the pictures I’ve sent and posted to my blog. The reasoning behind Air Force members wearing Army uniforms is that individuals like me, working in joint “outside-the-wire” assignments, shouldn’t stand out from each other. Once the Army adopted the ACU, that left the Air Force in DCUs, and since so many Air Force people are filling Army positions for the foreseeable future, Air Force members doing these Army jobs stood out significantly on the battlefield.

For a while the Air Force resisted the idea of its people wearing Army uniforms, until somebody at some level came to the realization that being different in a hostile environment is probably a bad thing, and that it would be better not to flag all of these Air Force people as targets. There are differing opinions about just how much more likely it is that somebody might get shot because they’re wearing DCUs and everybody else is in a different uniform, but to me it makes intuitive sense, and it seems to have been at least a contributing factor in several Air Force members being targeted and shot while out on missions.

Recently, the Air Force did an impressive round of late-in-the-game bandwagon-jumping that has actually been almost four years in the making. The Air Force has been trying to develop a BDU/DCU replacement since sometime around 2004. The first version came out while I was at the Academy, and was a striped blue and green pattern that was absolutely hideous, both tactically and aesthetically. Thankfully, they scrapped the prototype and presumably started work on a better version.

The eventual evolution of the blue/green uniform was the Airman Battle Uniform (ABU). It’s close to the same color-scheme as the ACU, except that it’s “tiger-stripe digital” rather than purely digital like the ACU. It also lacks the overwhelming majority of the functionality of the ACU. Except for the new pattern, the only differences from the former BDUs/DCUs are five additional pockets and two pen pockets. None of them are particularly useful. As far as I can tell, they took the old winter-weight BDUs, added several non-functional pockets, and changed the pattern. Don’t forget, this “modernization” was a multi-year process.

After almost six months in ACUs, I can definitively say they are the best uniform I’ve worn so far. They’re functional and ergonomic, and well suited to a hot desert environment. When wearing body armor, the sleeve pockets are handy, since every other pocket is covered by the armor. The collar is squared off, so that when it’s flipped up it wraps around your neck and seals out most dirt and debris, which makes body armor more comfortable around the neck and is particularly useful if you’re ever around helicopters as they land or take off. Possibly most importantly, it’s light and it breathes well. These are uniforms that see their harshest use in desert environments, so lightness and breathability are valued assets. All in all – and I’m not one to praise the Army too often – they did something right and produced a functional uniform in nearly every respect.

And then there’s the ABU. After a week wearing ABUs, I can tell you they were not developed by anybody who makes a habit of getting out from behind their desk, or who makes a habit of listening to people who do get out from behind their desks. The fabric, inexplicably, is the thickness of the old winter-weight BDUs. Strike one. The breast pockets, aside from being inaccessible without unbuttoning at least the top two buttons, are completely useless when wearing body armor. In places, they also add three layers of fabric (heavy fabric) to the overall thickness of the already hot uniform. Strike two. The pockets on the calves are about the right size for a cell phone, which I don’t make a habit of keeping accessible on a convoy. They’re almost the perfect size for a 30-round magazine, except they’re an inch too short, so you can’t button them, and as a result, if you try to run with magazines in the calf pockets, they fall out. Strike three. No pockets on the sleeves, except for a place to keep two pens. This was explained as a result of the Air Force trying to maintain its “heritage”, and since traditionally Air Force enlisted members have worn their stripes on their sleeves, the ACU-style shoulder pockets aren’t possible. Strike four. The list could keep growing, but you get the point.

The sleeve pockets warrant another critique, since I suspect enlisted stripes are only half the story about why they weren’t included on the uniform. As I mentioned for ACUs, there’s no practical way to crease the sleeve because of the shoulder pockets. BDUs had been adulterated to the point that the standard of how much “pride” a Soldier or Airman took in their uniform was how sharply the sleeves were starched and creased, so along with the rough-leather boots that don’t require shining, uncreased sleeves are actually a significant departure from previous style cues. I suspect the Air Force couldn’t bear the thought of all the flat-sleeved Airmen running around without sharp edges on their arms, because although the ABU is claimed to be permanent press and that ironing is neither necessary nor recommended, the sleeves and pants come with built in, pre-pressed creases that I’m hoping fade after a few washings. This is not indicative of a uniform designed with battlefield functionality in mind, and it makes me certain that the Air Force is significantly more concerned with fashion sense than functional, field-tested input.

As far as the heritage claim is concerned, the Air Force is full of shit. We’re the youngest service, and although our sixtieth birthday has us in the throes of an attempt to reclaim our “heritage”, we’ve been quick all along to throw out whatever has proved to be unpopular, as my time at the Academy amply proved. You want heritage? The Air Force used to be the Army Air Corps; give us ACUs with the Air Force digital tiger-stripe pattern. Hell, you can even sew on all the patches (or get rid of them, like the ABUs) rather than Velcro them, I really don’t care. Instead of being so wrapped around the axle about heritage (read: style), give us a functional battlefield uniform that will actually serve the “Airmen-Warriors” filling true battlefield roles. They’re also redesigning the service dress uniform to look more military-like, rather than the business suit trend that came around in the nineties. I’m all for that, because service dress is about appearance, and if they want to make a fashion statement out of it, that’s fine. Unfortunately, they’ve decided to make the same fashion statement with a uniform that has “Battle” as part of its name, and they’ve succeeded in creating something with none of the functionality that the Army and Marines achieved with their new uniforms.

As if this fashion-show game of catch-up wasn’t bad enough, here’s where it really gets stupid. Several months ago I received an additional set of Nomex ACUs, which are flame retardant, for use on convoys. This is a growing trend to help alleviate burn injuries caused by vehicle fires that can follow IED attacks. Nomex is hotter and less breathable than the standard ACU material, but having seen and helped bandage IED-inflicted burns, I can tell you that whatever minor discomfort Nomex might cause during a convoy pales in comparison to skin grafts and reconstructive surgery.

Now that the Air Force has provided us with uniforms that are fairly similar to ACUs when viewed from a distance, they have also decided that Air Force personnel on convoys should no longer be wearing Nomex ACUs. The alternative? Tan Nomex flight suits.

There are two safety issues at hand: blending in well enough not to be a distinct target (which ABUs accomplish), and burn resistance in the event of a vehicle fire (which Nomex accomplishes). For day-to-day operations outside the wire, blending in is the only relevant issue. For convoys, blending in and burn resistance are the two relevant issues, and there’s no correlation between the two. Why, if they have been issuing Airmen ACUs for the past year to alleviate the safety issue of being targeted for wearing a distinct uniform, would the Air Force decide that now that we have ABUs, we can start wearing another distinct uniform – the tan flight suit – during high-threat operations like convoys?

It’s important to note that a Nomex flight suit isn’t just another distinct uniform. It’s a distinct uniform that also turns me into a high-value target. I’m not an Intelligence Officer, but it shouldn’t take one to realize that jumping out of a vehicle during a convoy and looking like a pilot instantly makes my teammates and I more appealing targets. Do the Taliban know the difference? Maybe not, but it doesn’t matter. I guarantee they know what a pilot looks like, and even if they’re smart enough to figure out how unlikely it is for a convoy passenger to be an aircrew member, it’s still a propaganda win for them to capture or kill someone in a flight suit. If the next captive video you see on CNN is somebody in a tan flight suit, how many Americans do you think are going to take the time to understand the long and sad chain of idiotic decision-making that led to a civil engineer wearing a flight suit on a convoy?

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a worst-case scenario, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. The Air Force recognized it as enough of a possibility that they authorized ACUs for over a year, and now that we have ABUs, giving us back our “heritage” and “service identity”, all of the old safety concerns are forgotten and the Air Force decides that it’s okay for us to become distinct (and, I maintain, high-value) targets again. The inconsistency required to make this sort of decision is absolutely staggering. More troubling is the willful and knowing disregard for a previously acknowledged safety risk to Airmen traveling on convoys.

Let me take one more swing at this, in a more concise manner: Nomex flight suits have coincided exactly with the fielding of ABUs, for no reason other than a political decision made by people removed from the front-lines who are more concerned about style points and a sense of heritage that only seems to exist above the rank of colonel either behind a desk at Bagram or somewhere in the halls of the Pentagon. Is that a clear enough statement of my take on the matter? I hope so, because I can’t express my disappointment and disgust any more clearly.

While I’m at it, indulge me for a brief fraud-waste-and-abuse tangent. Aside from the incomprehensible decisions being made about the wear of these uniforms, let’s look at it from the standpoint of your tax dollars. I was issued four sets of DCUs before I left McGuire. Then I was issued for more sets of DCUs at Fort Bragg during training, along with four sets of ACUs. Then they gave me one set of Nomex ACUs, followed last week by four sets of brand new ABUs, which are now the sole uniform I am authorized to wear, except for the tan flight suit that they assure me will be showing up any day. That’s eighteen sets of uniforms in less than eight months, thirteen of which are now unauthorized and are to be disposed of in an operationally secure manner (which means they should be burnt, a unique challenge for the Nomex ACUs). Thousands of dollars per person per deployment is a tiny fraction of billions spent weekly to fight two wars, but this is the type of senseless waste of money the Air Force would do well to avoid, considering that we’re cutting 40,000 positions (in the middle of two wars, mind you) so that we can afford to buy new planes.

And now that I’m on a roll, indulge me for one more tangent. Last week I was a driver for a one-day trip to and from Bagram, where I only spent about five hours actually out of a vehicle and free to roam around the base. Lest I offend the sensibilities of all the people on Bagram who have been wearing ABUs for the past six months (as opposed to me, the guy outside the wire who only get them a week ago), the first thing I had to do after we parked the vehicles was go to my room and change out of my Nomex ACUs. This won’t change once I get my flight suit, because the people who made that decision didn’t bother to acknowledge that without nametags, patches, or rank a flight suit isn’t a complete uniform and can’t be worn to the dining facility (or anywhere else outside of a vehicle), so if my convoy leaves around lunchtime, the last thing I have to do, in the midst of prepping and loading vehicles, attempting to grab some food, and receiving a convoy briefing, is to go to my room, change, and then run back out so we can leave.

Does it require any more than ten minutes to go change before and after a convoy? No, not really. It’s still infuriating though, because all of the money that has been spent, all of the policy letters that have been written, all of these hoops that we have to jump through now are purely for the sake of appearance. When the leadership and the public see pictures of us in the media, they can feel better about the fact that they know for certain we’re in the Air Force, so that the service gets the credit it deserves. Never mind that ABUs offer no functional improvements over the old uniforms, never mind concerns about being targeted, never mind the failure to issue (or, to the best of my knowledge, even manufacture) associated ABU items required for cold weather. Rest easy: We’re distinct again, and the Air Force is going to get the credit it deserves.