Canadian soldiers in Afghanastan wearing green uniforms.

[Pongo]

Canada has pretty good personel gear for our troops. The combats I wore for 7 years in the canadian infantry in The middle east, near the arctic circle and in panama on the equator where all the same type. And the worked excellent in all those places.(add mucklucks for the arctic..and Jungle boots for the tropics..I was certainly happier with my combats then the Green Berets were with theirs when we were up north. or the Brits were with theirs.
This is just another example of Canadians whining. Its our national past time.  We have excellenty equiped light infantry units. They will do excellent once they get used to the ground and weather. The trouble starts when our low manpower levels force the gov to commit dismounted armour and arty units as infantry...then things get real interesting.
Lots of new troops where disapointed with the bland mono tone green combats we were issued. They wanted camo!. But they soon learned that the qualities of our combats for wear and camo were unmatched. Especially once the green weathered a bit into many shades of green...

The reason we have not replaced our combats in so long is because they were bloody excellent kit. They have looked at other types many times and decided to skip it. What we had was excellent. They made minor adjustments over the years but why change somthing that suites its function so well..for military fashion? lol
I hope they have the nuts to only change gear to improve it. Not cause it looks good in a catalog.
And those long underwear were excellent too! Bloody things kept me alive several times...
What we going to laugh at next...Wool socks?
But they can be rediculous.
They have issued new rucksacks that are boob freindly...
The straps have big cut outs on them so they dont lay accross womans breasts...But that forces the lode out to just about the armpits. So the guys that really use rucks have to put real straps on to take the weight of the lodes they carry...The lady dental techs have a comfortable ruck put in their closets though...

[easymo]

I arrived in Vietnam in class-A wintergreens (wool).

  There is the right way.  The wrong way.  And the Army way.

[Thrawn]

Yeah, but Pongo, wtf do you know about it?

Sorry guys looks like I was off base with this, my apologies.  And thanks for the info Pongo, makes me feel alot better.

[SirLoin]

Great post Pongo!!!..Very refreshing to get an inside scoop of our forces.I guess the press tends to blow things outta context to suit thier own political purposes(concering morale and combat readiness)...

[Tumor]

I'd like to know when the freekin military (any, but especially the U.S.) is gonna get around to realising there's a reason all the Air Force pilots wear thier green bags around.  The U.S. "BDU" is ok for comfort and utility RIGHT UP UNTIL you gotta gear up....then there couldn't be a more uncomfortable combination of bulky crappy bad fitting clothing possible.  If you don't wear suspenders with'em...adding to the discomfort, you can forget keeping your pants up.  Damn blouse just LOVES to ride up in front under web gear.  I toejam you not, it's like they designed these things to piss you off.  How a shirt can manage to ride up so most of it ends up at about tit level while your crawling forward is beyond me but....they do!!  I'm sure I'll go to my grave wishing combat clothing consisted of a nice sturdy jumpsuit, but then that would be logical.

[skernsk]

There was a news story last night here.  They are painting the Coyote's in desert colors before shipping them overseas.

We can't transport them though:)  A few years  ago they shut down the Air Force Base here.  It had (I bleieve) the second longest runway in North America ... it was even a back up runway for the Space Shuttle.

The Arny took it over and built buildings along that runway to the point where it's unusable now.  It's a 10 lane tank highway now.  I'm not a high ranking officer, but it seems to me that IF we ever had to ship out it would make sense to keep the runway active and put up buildings in the hundreds of acres away from the runway.  Then a transport could land on the base, load up and ship out!  Not right now.  They have to load on trailers, take em to the opposite side of town and fly them out of there.

Pongo,

I'm sorry to whine about the military, but it makes ya shake your head from time to time.

[Charon]

The current Liberal Party government(currently in it's third term)has decimated the moral and slashed to budget of our once proud millitary.We are only capable of peacekeeping missions and expect our friends in the south to do all the dangerous ops'.We have a batch of F-18's but almost half of them are being salvaged for parts .

At least you still work to maintain an air force, unlike your commonwealth cousin New Zealand. Now that is a sad state of affairs.

Charon

[Pongo]

Skernsk. No prob. Whine away I do, the troops do...just trying to direct the energy to something constructive.

Global airlift capability is something you dont need if you are not projecting power globaly.  You would never move a mechanized battle group by air...Unless you were worried about invasion ie Gulf war. You move them by sea and use comercial ships to do so. There is plenty of roll on-roll off capacity on the market and it is much cheaper for Canadas purposes to use that.
You mentioned the Coyote..Cant wait to hear how those work out. They seem to be perfect for the role that our boys will be playing over there...Export orders to follow I bet.

[Jack55]

Crawl around a little in the local mud and the Pats will blend in nicely.

[zarkov]

Originally posted by Tumor
I'm sure I'll go to my grave wishing combat clothing consisted of a nice sturdy jumpsuit, but then that would be logical.

I think the US army tried a one-piece uniform in WWII.  They were highly successful until it was discovered that it was difficult to go potty while wearing them.

I got this snippet from Understanding Wartime Behaviour - I forget the author's name but he was an infantryman in the ETO in WWII and later became a prof. at the University of Pennsylvania.

[Pongo]

We had winter camo out fits that were jump suites.....big baggy ones.to go over our combats and parkas. .And they had that problem..ok for a 3 hour patrol but not for general operations. The two piece winter cam smocks were better.

[K West]

I recalled this topic as I browsed CNN's site with todays pictures of US forces in Afghanistan.  Damn if the US forces did not stick out like sore thumbs against the khaki background with thier predomately green camo.
 It would appear that the only kevlar vests they had were mostly green and brown camo'd covered.  That and many of the uniforms themselves have a predominately green motiff to them.


  Westy

[batdog]

Heh... camo samo spamo...we're not WORRIED about hiding. We're making THEM hide...lol.

 No in all seriousness the best uni I wore was jungle fatiques. BDU's ...well the only ones I wore for everything where the "jungle" ones. Why? They dried alot quicker if you got wet..and it doesnt matter if its hot or cold...wet for a long time sucks.


I remember the Brits from Hong Kong ie Coldstream Guards bought thier own rucks, as they stated that the ones issued sucked.
 


xBAT

[K West]

for example

[Tumor]

Originally posted by K West
for example

Ahhh...  once you pull the trigger, camo is not really all that important