Personally, I do not like the way the ACUs are made, the velcro doesn't last long and I know it says they have a wear life of 6 months, but I'm lucky if they look good for two. Also, it says they are "wrinkle free", I beg to differ. Basically I think they look atrocious and a waste of money. I know we can come up with a better uniform than this.
What's your opinion and what would you change?
Uniforms
SGT P.,
You seem to be looking to try and come up with excuses for not showing pride in your uniform for the reason to not have to or want to wear a non-utility uniform, again the common sense factor comes into play, I can tell by your demeanor and comments you have not been in long enough to remember the days of morning formation inspections in the motor pool and having to do maintenance, most people did 1 of 2 things, they brought a pair of coveralls with them to the MP to save their hard work from the weekend, or they did a quick change in the parking lot of boots and/or BDU tops. The same would work for an S-6 NCO having to go somewhere to troubleshoot,1st no one would look down on you for taking the few minutes to change or put on a pair of overalls to work on equipment or change a toner cartridge out that "could explode" as you mentioned, instead of making excuses, you should be thinking and devising ways to be proactive for the issue instead of looking for a reason to say I shouldn't have to be wearing my ASUs for my duty uniform.
For many years, even before BDUs, the duty uniform for many were khaki's in garrison and the field uniform for motor pool, details, and field type jobs while in garrison, and no one complained about someone who had to or needed to change. This is part of the issue with the new generation of Soldiers, they have become lazy in garrison environment, while they may be a stud when deployed and have fast tracked on their promotions based on what they accomplished while deployed and in combat, they are also lackadaisical on performing to standards while back in garrison or accepting what was the standard before we spent last 13 years in dual wars. They say it is a stronger more intelligent forces, but many times they new breed are too smart for their own good as they are more concerned with looking on how to get out of doing what is standard more the they are concerned with enforcing the standards and getting back to basics and standards that work and were functional for generations before they came along.
You need to take a step back and take a look at the whole picture and not what you want and how it affects you, but what the military overall is affected in regards to professionalism and how they look and are perceived and believe it or not the look of the military is not in a good light with the way uniforms look and are perceived.
Back in the day we took pride in our uniforms and was taught that the uniform represented our great country. Also you could normally gauge a soldier by his appearance and how well he took care of his uniform. Yes it takes time to iron a uniform and spit shine boots, and IMO it was well worth the time.
I still have a couple of pairs of well pressed BDU's sitting in the closet and a pair of Jump Boots that are 25 years old and I can still see the gleam from the shine on them.
I agree with the others on here when we moved from the BDU to ACU we lost a lot of our professional appearance. It was a lot easier to figure out who to watch when their uniform was always jacked up and their boots were always nasty. Any Leader could pay attention and home in on a problem Soldier with a quickness.
I wish they would bring them back - I still have my favorite pair of jungle boots spit shined sitting in my garage. LOL.
I joined the Army in 1999. When I got to my first unit at Fort Drum, NY I was taught that the appearance of my uniform was a direct reflection of my own motivation, dedication, and respect for the military service. I was taught very quickly some tricks of the trade for starching and ironing my BDUs and for polishing my boots. I can remember getting inspected by my leadership at morning formation and the look on their faces that told me that they respected the pride that I took in my uniform and myself.
I remember passing those lessons on to my Soldiers when I became a Team Leader and my Squad Leader giving me the pat on the back when my team looked squared away every morning.
I have deployed wearing DCUs, ACUs, and MultiCam. Now, I understand the concept behind ACUs and how they are set up to be a more combat friendly uniform. The chest pockets are much to get to when you're wearing body armor and the additional pockets on the legs are pretty useful for maps and markers or even an extra magazine. That being said, the ACUs are absolutely terrible as a garrison uniform. Not to sound like a broken record, but the Velcro is horrible and wears out way too fast. Soldiers end up with the cuffs of their blouses flapping around and the top Velcro always flaps open and looks awful.
Of course I get the concept of taking care of your uniform and making it as presentable and professional looking as possible, but ACUs don't really make that easy to do. I miss BDUs and I always will. It was said that ACUs were also going to save Soldiers money, but I believe that it costs them ore money to get Velcro replaced and zippers fixed. Not to mention that tan boots are almost impossible to keep clean. Yes, they make cleaning kits for them, but they don't work very well at all.
Bottom line is that BDUs were a much better garrison uniform and were a lot easier to maintain. Let's just hope the powers that be listen to voice of the masses and go back to them. ACUs not only cost Soldiers more money, but look at how much money it cost to make them and replace BDUs. Not really worth the price in my opinion.
I would gladly go back to the BDUs. I actually looked forward to preparing my uniform every week. From shining boots to getting the sharpest crease, you could tell who cared about their appearance.
These days, you can just pull your uniform out of the dryer and throw it on. Some people don't even bother to take off their patches before they wash their uniform. That's a big pet peeve of mine. I can't stand to see a wrinkled up unit patch on a uniform. I like some of the features in the ACU's but overall they are garbage.
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