If you want to get a sense of the broad range of Defense Department activities, there’s no better reading than the 638-page House-Senate conferee report on the fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill released last week.
You could start with apparel. Each service has its camouflage uniforms, which are different even within services. What to do?
The House wants to standardize uniforms to increase “interoperability” of ground troops and “reduce tactical risk” — so they don’t shoot each other by mistake.
The Senate has different ideas but maybe the same goals. Senators like that camouflage uniforms “uniquely reflect the identity of the individual services” but they also want “interoperability.” The Senate also directed that the comptroller general report back on his assessment of combat and camouflage uniforms in use on the battlefield.
The conferees made clear that none of this was to affect Special Forces, who “design and deploy combat uniforms to meet their specific mission requirements.” They added, however, that “technological advances and improvements” Special Forces incorporate in their combat uniforms should be shared with the other services when “appropriate and cost effective.”
