Posted on Jan 17, 2020
Why is the U.S. Army the only branch that wears the full-color U.S. Flag?
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I've consistently wondered why the U.S. Army is the only branch that wears the full-color U.S. Flag patch on the combat uniform. Marines don't wear anything on their combat uniform, but Navy and Air Force both wear the subdued U.S. Flag patch on theirs. AR 670-1 Ch 19-18 states "All soldiers will wear the full-color U.S. Flag embroidered insignia utility and organizational uniforms, unless deployed or in a field environment. Soldiers will wear the subdued tactical flag insignia while deployed or in a field environment." While I understand the regulation, it seems to me that wearing the subdued flag insignia would make more sense because it matches the uniform pattern. What are your thoughts? PFC (Join to see) SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" LTC Stephen F. CPL Dave Hoover SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth SSG (Join to see) Capt Dwayne Conyers CPT Jack Durish SGT Ben Keen CPT (Join to see)
American Flag
Uniforms
Soldiers
DA Pam 670-1
Army Regulations
Edited >1 y ago
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 89
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In 2014 when I was in Afghanistan we were issued the subdued flag to wear???
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A subdued seems appropriate on all uniforms. However... it is much easier nowadays to use velcro - as some uniforms have and have both style patches - colorful and subdued interchangeable and put on the velcro when called for- subdued in the Field, and colorful in Conus bases . for the Uniform
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As a vet that was trained on FLIR in 79 I totally understood why the air force changed our name and branch from blue and white to subdued.
Not to be disrespectful but back when I was in this would show up as a target, my question is the same but a from a different prospective, why do we put neon targets on our young soldiers? No disrespect in any way.
Not to be disrespectful but back when I was in this would show up as a target, my question is the same but a from a different prospective, why do we put neon targets on our young soldiers? No disrespect in any way.
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When I was in the Navy we wore dungarees and the only thing on our shirts was our name and an iron on rank on the left sleeve.
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I wore full color flag patches on my flight suits for 12 years. While deployed in 02, I wore full colored flag patches on my Security Forces Brassard. Oh yeah, I’m Air Force.
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In the USAF, it depends on the uniform! During some years I was in (I was in almost 27 years), we wore subdued flags on fatigues, other years it was full color. On flight suits, the vast majority of the time, if we were wearing our flag, it was full color. And, there were different patches if you wore it on the right or left sleeve but, the stars always went forward! Our Flag does not retreat!
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CW3 Walter Goerner
Oh really? I was in the Air Force from 1970 to 1979 before I switched to Army and never did the blue field reverse regardless of what arm we wore our flag on our flight suits. It's U.S. flag protocol that mandates the blue field to the left of the stripes.
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There was a time when the U.S. flag was not on the combat/utility uniform. I believe it was the same guy that came up with the idea of berets for all Soldiers that instituted mandatory flags on uniforms.
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Oops. I guess I shouldn't use talk to text when I found out that I can't edit my typos.
When I said OCONUS, it wrote all conus.
And I didn't catch it.
When I said OCONUS, it wrote all conus.
And I didn't catch it.
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I guess I didn't have a problem with it.
When were we were all conus we wore the subdued one anyway.
Let's not bring up the ballistic PT belt requirement that we had in OEF.
When were we were all conus we wore the subdued one anyway.
Let's not bring up the ballistic PT belt requirement that we had in OEF.
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