Military Camouflage Continues To Evolve—There Is No Perfect Pattern

U.S. Marines walk through America’s Air Show after a demonstration at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on September 26, 2025 in San Diego, California. They wearing the MARPAT camouflage (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

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It may be time to admit that camouflage isn’t nearly as effective as it is claimed to be. Since the start of the 21st century, the United States military has undergone several iterations to find something effective in multiple environments, only to return to the drawing board and devise something different.

That might not seem like a huge deal, considering the vast sums the Pentagon spends annually, but the costs add up, especially for individual troops who often purchase additional uniforms beyond what they’re issued.

Last week, writing for Military.com, reporter Robert Billard suggested that even the United States Marine Corps’ “MARPAT” camouflage uniform—a relatively successful pattern—had “arguably run its course.” He argued that “in an era of tight budget and evolving threats, perhaps it is time to ditch the ‘digi’s’ and return to something simple.”

For the U.S. Marines, it could mean a flat coyote brown or olive drab utility uniform. It would return to the types of training and combat uniforms worn in past wars.

From Frogskin Pattern To MARPAT

The United States military’s first foray into camouflage occurred in 1940, when the Army Corps of Engineers began experimenting with patterns designed to help soldiers blend in with their environment on the battlefield. With help from Norvell Gillespie, the horticulturist and gardening editor at Better Homes and Gardens magazine, the effort led to the development of the “frogskin” pattern. It featured rounded shapes and had two faces, one green for spring and summer and one brown for fall and early winter.

The U.S. Army only briefly issued camouflage uniforms to some soldiers during the Normandy campaign in northern France in the summer of 1940. There was a problem, however.

As it wasn’t widely used, it wasn’t familiar to other U.S. and Allied personnel, a fact made worse because it closely resembled the camouflage in use with Nazi Germany’s Waffen SS units that were also operating in the region. Not wanting the soldiers to be confused for the enemy, and one of the more notorious ones at that, the Army quickly retired camouflage from service in Europe.

However, on the other side of the world, the “frogskin” camouflage was widely issued to the U.S. Army personnel. There was still a serious problem. The Army opted to produce a single-piece jumpsuit, which was ill-suited to the hot jungle conditions of the Pacific.

The United States Marine Corps opted for a two-piece utility suit instead, and that proved to be the first successful U.S. military camouflage uniform. It was effective in the Solomon Islands Campaign, notably on Bougainville with its dense jungle and vast foliage, but was less so during the sandy island of Tarawa, which had little vegetation other than palm trees.

That should have served as a warning that camouflage could never be universally effective, even in particular theaters of operations. Yet, in the decades to come, the military would try anyway.

During the Cold War, when it was believed that a future conflict would be in Europe against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, the U.S. Army’s Engineer Research & Development Laboratories attempted to develop an improved version of the frog pattern, which consisted of “leaves and twigs,” with mixed results. The “Leaf” pattern was employed by reconnaissance and special operations forces in early 1967, but not in Europe. Instead, it was in Vietnam, a nation that also had a mix of geographic features.

The ERDL pattern utilized four colors, printed in an interlocking pattern that included black “branches” along with a mix of mid-green “leaf” highlights and brown tones. A brown-dominant version was unofficially known as the “Highland” variant, while the green-dominant version was dubbed the “Lowland.”

The USMC adopted the latter and became standard issue in Vietnam. As with the frogskin pattern, ERDL was effective in some parts of the country and less so in others.

In 1981, with the adoption of the Battle Dress Uniform, the ERDL pattern was refined to become the “woodland pattern,” which was subsequently adopted by the U.S. military. It saw use in the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, and again in the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, where it served reasonably well.

In 2002, the Marine Corps sought to develop a uniform pattern distinct from that used by the U.S. Army, which led to the development of MARPAT. It quickly became known as “digital camouflage,” as it employs small rectangular pixels of color.

The USMC conducted rigorous field testing, which included various environments and both day and night operations, utilizing night vision and different optics. The results found it to be more effective than the woodland pattern.

The Army Has Been Less Successful With Camouflage

After the end of the Cold War, the United States military, notably the U.S. Army, found that it needed more than just a woodland pattern. It also required a desert pattern, and what it had wasn’t really up to the task.

The Desert Battle Dress Uniform was developed in 1977, utilizing a six-color scheme that became known as the “chocolate chip” pattern due to its resemblance to cookie dough. DBDU saw use in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 in Iraq, and then in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993. But as it was developed in the rocky desert of California, it didn’t blend into the sandy desert of the Middle East and East Africa.

That led to the U.S. military taking a close look at desert soil samples in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and developing the Desert Camouflage Uniform just in time for 2001’s Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and then 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom. Also known as “coffee stain” due to its dark brown patterns over khaki, it was considered an improvement; however, what worked well in one region was less effective in another. DCU was also less effective in the urban fighting in Iraq.

That led to the development of the Universal Camouflage Pattern, which blended tan, gray and greens in what appeared to be pixels from an 1980s eight-byte video game. Yet, it was only universal in that it was ineffective in every environment. Writer Hope Hodge Seck, in her piece for Military.com, summed UCP camouflage, “It blended in well with grandma’s couch, but had its drawbacks in the combat zone.”

That failure then led to the introduction of the Army’s Operation Camouflage Pattern, which had actually been developed as part of the Objective Force Warrior program in 2002 but was passed over in favor of the UCP.

Billions Spent

All of these changes have been costly, with the Government Accountability Office warning in a 2012 report that transitioning from UCP to OCP cost $4 billion, excluding the costs associated with testing.

And this brings us to what Robert Billard suggested in his piece for Military.com.

It may be time to go back to a simple uniform that is a single color.

“As threats evolve from dense jungles to urban sprawls, a versatile solid color is the smart move,” Billard wrote.

It should also be remembered that “khaki” was the original universally worn camouflage, first adopted by the British Army in India in the early 19th century. Khaki, the Persian word for “dust,” proved more effective than the scarlet tunics worn throughout the British Empire. Sand colored uniforms became universal among other colonial powers, including the French, Germans and Italians, who soon adopted khaki uniforms for their troops in Africa. The American military wore khaki in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, and it remained in use through the Cold War.

America’s adversaries, including the Japanese and Vietnamese, also wore khaki.

History shows that a single color might not be such a bad idea.

Even before khaki, British Rangers had worn solid green uniforms during the French and Indian Wars in the 18th century, and there is even speculation that the bandits on whom Robin Hood was based wore green clothing to better blend into their surroundings.

It is time to reconsider a simple khaki, olive drab, or coyote brown uniform, as camouflage is never as universally accepted as its designer hopes it will be.