As of Oct. 1, the Army’s pixelated Universal Camouflage Pattern Uniform (UCP) will be a thing of the past. All soldiers will be required to own and wear the green-and-brown Operational Camouflage Pattern Uniform.
“The only universal thing about it was that it was universally disliked,” Joe Karle, a former Army infantryman who served in Afghanistan, told the Washington Examiner. “You didn’t feel like a real soldier in it.”
First introduced in 2004, the UCP uniform has faced a lot of criticism over the years due to its inability to hide those wearing it when it matters most.
The UCP uniform reportedly cost $5 billion to create. Before the UCP was introduced, soldiers were forced to wear “woodland” and “chocolate chip” camouflage for desert and wooded areas. Aside from troops not liking the uniform, it also faded easily and suffered from poor stitching.
The Navy also bid farewell to the controversial “blueberry” camouflage uniforms on Tuesday.
