Vol. 01 No. 08
Today is the last installment of my “Camouflaged to Stand out Series,” based on my essay presented at the Sartorial Society. Next week there will be something new! But for now, the story of MultiCam.
As mentioned, MultiCam was already being used by US Special Operations Forces, who were allowed to acquire their own uniforms and equipment with private budgets. These “elite” units worked closely with other nations’ special forces units, which also began to adopt the pattern. The “special forces operator” or just “operator” has been one of the defining and influential styles of the Global War on Terror. Bearded operators seen as elite and captured in Hollywood films of the era became the military tastemakers. As an observer writing in The New Republic put it, “We worship the post-9/11 military operator. We are a nation drunk on ‘tacticool’ culture.”
MultiCam’s connection to Special Forces led the UK to work with Crye on crafting a new camouflage. What was eventually settled on was the UK’s Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP) which incorporated MultiCam’s color scheme with shapes present in the UK’s prior camouflage, giving the pattern continuity along with being new. In a BBC video presenting the new pattern, an Army spokesperson said, “camouflage does two things. The obvious one is that it hides you, but the other less obvious one is that it’s your Corporate Image… We wanted to retain a camouflage that would be recognizably British Army brand.”
The adoption of MultiCam uniforms, or uniforms that used MultiCam knockoffs, spread far beyond the UK. Nations where the US Military frequently trains or works with local forces like Georgia, Poland, Ukraine, Albania, and Lebanon all use the pattern in some form. Similarly, the majority of NATO and EU nations all use MultiCam-like patterns to some extent. Many Commonwealth Nations have adopted variants of the pattern, including Australia which has its own version. And even the Canadian’s have used the pattern. The spread of MultiCam to these other nations happened near-universally through US Special Forces interactions with their nations Special Forces. The widespread adoption of the pattern led one commentator in the National Interest to ask, “is the dominance of MultiCam a function of the environments soldiers have found themselves deployed in nowadays? Or is it a “trend” of sorts? Will we see militaries continue to move to the pattern, or has the trend past its peak?” While no country has dropped the pattern yet, the Royal Marine Commandos have switched from the British MTP pattern to off the peg MultiCam in a bid to assert their own Corporate Identity, as the USMC did 20 years prior.
While military culture does not often intrude in American civilian life, when it does, it is always wearing camouflage. We saw this starkly last summer during the Black Lives Matter protests when federal agents were deployed to American cities wearing OCP camouflage and dressing like soldiers. While the Federal agent’s actions were comparable to many police departments – i.e. violent – the uniforms informed much of the news coverage. It felt like soldiers were occupying American cities. Here too, camouflage was not being worn to blend in, but to level intimidation of state power and project authority. This visual identity has also been used by extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters who use camouflage uniforms to recruit and intimidate. It has gotten to the point where the military has become indistinguishable from armed extremists and the police. In the run-up to January 6, the DC National Guard announced they would wear black vests to stand out from law enforcement agencies that wore the same tactical gear and camouflage. The writer Spencer Ackerman has made the case that the aesthetics and tactics of the War on Terror have now been turned inward to the US, I believe the Military uniform culture is part of it.
If we understand uniforms as being fundamental to the transformation of the civilian into the soldier, we must consider the outcome when the individual can undergo the transition without joining the military. Instead of, enabling “them to escape their personal identity to meet the challenge of performing military tasks” it becomes their personal identity.
Till next time,
CWM.
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