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The camouflage pattern will not stand alone among coming changes to the Army Combat Uniform. Joining the camo: a new belt, undershirt and boots.

The new personal gear, expected to roll out this summer, is darker to better match the new Operational Camouflage Pattern. Current lighter colors of the maligned gray Universal Camouflage Pattern would provide stark contrast to the new pattern.

Perhaps most visible: the default Desert Tan boots of today will give way to Coyote Brown 498. The darker color will blend better in a wider variety of environments, according to Program Executive Office Soldier. Coyote brown also does not show dirt or wear as easily as today’s tan boots.

via New camo means new boots, belt and T-shirt.

The changeover to a new uniform doesn’t happen instantaneously. It takes a while. Eventually the Army will publish a “wear out” date beyond which the older style uniform components will not be authorized.

Until then, we can expect to see various Sergeants Major having conniption fits about soldiers wearing light colored boots with the new, darker uniforms, and other such shenanigans.

The actual cost for changing the uniforms isn’t so much (for the government, at least) but the fact that virtually all Organizational Clothing and Individual Equipment will have to be replaced with new pattern gear will be expensive.

One of the first casualties was the Crusader artillery program, which was canceled after the Pentagon spent more than $2 billion on it. Then there was the Comanche helicopter debacle, which got the ax after $8 billion. More than twice that amount had been sunk into the Army’s Future Combat System, but that program got killed, too.

In all, between 2001 and 2011 the Defense Department spent $46 billion on at least a dozen programs — including a new version of the president’s helicopter — that never became operational, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

via Efforts underway to improve Pentagon’s procurement system – The Washington Post.

Sometimes, the engineering complexity of a procurement program means that it will take a long time to come to fruition. And in that time, the needs of the service may change.

Of course, some programs start out overly ambitious, and are doomed to failure. That Army in particular seems fond of this approach. The RAH-66 Comanche started out as one of three variants of a program known as LHX, a program started in the early 1980s, to replace all the UH-1, AH-1, OH-6 and OH-58 helicopters. The Army spend over six years just trying to figure out what it wanted, before even getting around to issuing an RFP to industry. And because stealth was the buzzword at the time, the Army insisted it needed a stealth helicopter. Now, you can build a stealthy helicopter. But that adds a lot to the cost. Or, you could simply do what helicopters normally do, and fly nap of the earth, and use terrain masking to stay off enemy radar. It’s cheaper. And its what a stealth helicopter would do anyway.

But for all the stupidity the services bring to the procurement table, they’re not solely to blame. The Federal Acquisition Regulations, or FAR are some of the most complex, byzantine rules in existence. So much money is spent ensuring that procurement is “fair” and free of corruption that the process becomes more important than the product.

This strangulation by regulation has led down some strange paths. When the Air Force started to look to replace its aging KC-135 fleet, it knew exactly what it wanted. It wanted a simple tanker conversion of the Boeing 767. But the Air Force couldn’t just order tankers, or just ask Congress for the money. In an effort to sidestep having to issue an RFP and hold a competition, the Air Force came up with a convoluted plan to lease 100 converted tankers from Boeing. The plan blew up in the Air Forces face, exposed corruption in the civil service, would have cost the taxpayers more money, and left Boeing holding onto the tankers at the end of the lease. On the other hand, it would have put very capable tankers on the ramp very quickly, and a low cost sale to the Air Force of the used tankers at the end of the lease was pretty plausible.

Instead, the Air Force was forced to hold multiple competitions between Boeing and Airbus, and do so in such a way the whichever tanker it eventually bought (the 767 eventually won) would end up being more complicated and expensive than the simple plane they originally envisioned. So here we are a decade and a half later, and the first fully equipped KC-46 still hasn’t flown. It’s still four years away from entering operational service.

Anything that make the acquisition process more streamlined is a good thing. Let’s hope DoD and Congress can move forward with some real reforms.

A jet from the Navy’s elite Blue Angels flight demonstration team has skidded off a runway in Maine. No injuries are reported.

An official at the former base where the fighter was landing to promote an air show says the F/A-18 Hornet slid off the end of the runway after hitting ice Thursday morning. The jet spun and ended up off the pavement.

via Navy Blue Angel Slides Off Runway | NECN.

No injuries, and probably not too much damage. There’s video at the link.

Some of the first female sailors to serve on Navy submarines were secretly recorded while they undressed.

The women were recorded aboard the ballistic missile submarine Wyoming, Gold crew, which is home ported in Kings Bay, Georgia. Navy officials are investigating an unidentified 24-year-old male who is accused of making and distributing the videos, according to a Nov. 14 incident report circulated among the service’s most senior leaders. The sailor was identified only by his rank: second class petty officer.

The videos are believed to show at least three female officers while showering or undressed that were recorded over more than a year, according to a source who has spoken to one of the alleged victims.

via Navy: Women secretly filmed in shower aboard sub.

The incredibly stupid actions of one sailor, a freakin’ petty officer who should know better, are going to cause major pain throughout the submarine community.

The thing that really frustrates me about the women in subs issue is that it is always about what the service can do for women. It is never shown, by any sort of metric beyond “diversity” that adding women to a boats crew will improve the performance or combat readiness.

Here’s another little gem from the article, from a female Lieutenant who served on one of the first integrated crews:

“The only reason I was there was to stop the submariners from being a–holes, and to get the women to stop crying,” she recalled. “I felt like it was fine, but I felt like I was in control of the situation.”

Note, she’s not talking about a 19 year old E-2. She’s talking about commissioned officers crying. As for submariners being a–holes, new, non-qualified sailors are worked to the bone until they earn their coveted dolphins, the qualification badge. Until then, they’re mere apprentices, not journeymen actually adding value to the crew. And the boorish behavior toward them helps weed out those who don’t have the commitment and temperament to  be successful.

To be sure, if the petty officer did in fact videotape the women, that’s both reprehensible, and criminal. And he deserves to get nuked for it. But its a dead certainty that senior leadership will find this a larger narrative, and learn all the wrong lessons, and manage to increase the pain for everyone.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Update: Boy, did I screw up trusting the media. As a twitter reader pointed out, Grozny is in Chechnya.

Meanwhile, there are unconfirmed reports Moscow has closed its airspace to all civilian traffic.

Reports on Twitter state there are fighter jets overhead as military helicopters cris-cross the city.

Russian media state President Vladmir Putin rushed to the Kremlin at 1.15am local time in response to reports of the outbreak of violence.

 

via Russian military on alert in Moscow, Grozny amid new Crimea crisis | The Courier-Mail.

There’s reports Moscow airspace is closed, with fighters and helicopters overhead.  This at the same time as fighting in Grozny would indicate that Russia at least suspects some militants are in Moscow.

Interesting times.

H/T to Spill.