{"id":8517,"date":"2017-06-21T14:03:09","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T21:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=8517"},"modified":"2026-02-05T11:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T19:44:09","slug":"pink-uniforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/?p=8517","title":{"rendered":"Pink Uniforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following entry is a record in the \u201cCatalogue of Catastrophe<\/a>\u201d \u2013\u00a0a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world.<\/p>\n

\n

US Department of Defense\u00a0<\/strong>\u2013\u00a0USA
\nProject type :\u00a0<\/strong>Military aid
\nDate :<\/strong>\u00a0Jun\u00a02017\u00a0Cost :\u00a0<\/strong>$28M<\/p>\n

Synopsis :<\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States spends a significant amount of aid money supporting\u00a0the military of allied countries. With the aim of stabilizing nations and ensuring global security, money is poured into training, equipment and consulting services. A significant amount of that money has flowed into Afghanistan over the years and talk of waste has been an ongoing theme. A story from the US Attorney General highlights the problem and casts light on the types of dysfunctional decision-making that\u00a0trigger such failures.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camouflage uniforms – Afghanistan – Open Government Licence version 1.0 – Source: Maj P. Smyth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In June 2017 the office of the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction published a report titled “Afghan National Army: DOD May Have Spent Up To $28 Million More Than Needed To Procure Camouflage Uniforms That May Be Inappropriate For the Afghan Environment”. The report details the 2007 procurement process used to acquire\u00a0uniforms for the entire Afghan Army. With the goal of unifying the army’s battle dress a project was initiated to identify a camouflage pattern that could be used for the uniforms. Although the US Military has a range of camouflage patterns that could be used at no cost, the officials involved,\u00a0simply surfed the Internet looking for alternatives. According to reports the officials “ran across” a ‘forest’ pattern offered by a private company. Because the pattern was privately owned, uniforms made with the pattern would need to pay a license fee to the rights holder. Despite that issue, the pattern was shown to the Afghan Defense Minister who\u00a0“liked what he saw”. As a result the decision to pay for the priority pattern was made. Apparently no efforts were made to engage the actual troops or their commanders and no effort was made to get the camouflage to determine its suitability to the Afghan geography. Given that only 2% of Afghanistan is forest, the use of a forest pattern does seem like a poor\u00a0choice.<\/p>\n

In an interview with USA Today, the\u00a0author of the report is quoted as having said:\u00a0\u201cMy concern is what if the minister of defense liked purple, or pink?\u00a0Are we going to buy pink uniforms for soldiers and not ask questions? That\u2019s insane. This is just simply stupid on its face. We wasted $28 million of taxpayers\u2019 money in the name of fashion, because the defense minister thought that that pattern was pretty. So if he thought pink or chartreuse was it, would we have done that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Contributing factors as reported in the press:<\/strong>
\nNon-experts being allowed to make unilateral decisions. Lack of management oversight. \u00a0Failure to engage appropriate stakeholders. Lack of quality control activities (failure to test the uniforms or do a peer review).<\/p>\n

Other related projects:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP)<\/a> – The US Army’s own camouflage project failed back in 2012.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Reference links :<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Pentagon ‘wasted $28m’ on Afghan camouflaged uniforms<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Following entry is a record in the \u201cCatalogue of Catastrophe\u201d \u2013\u00a0a list of failed and troubled projects from around the world. US Department of Defense\u00a0\u2013\u00a0USA Project type :\u00a0Military aid Date :\u00a0Jun\u00a02017\u00a0Cost :\u00a0$28M Synopsis : The United States spends a significant amount of aid money supporting\u00a0the military of allied countries. With the aim of stabilizing nations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,77],"tags":[138,134,100,131,129,62,93,147],"class_list":["post-8517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-project","category-failed-project","category-why-projects-fail","tag-causes-of-failure","tag-decision-making","tag-examples-of-failed-projects","tag-military-project","tag-failed-project","tag-quality-management","tag-why-do-projects-fail","tag-why-projects-fail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8517"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9982,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8517\/revisions\/9982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calleam.com\/WTPF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}