Battleland

Clothes Call: Camouflaged Spending

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GAO

Joe and Jane American don’t buy warships, satellites, tanks and jet fighters. But they do purchase clothes to wear in a variety of colors and patterns.

That’s what makes Thursday’s story in the Washington Post on the military’s never ending-quest to purchase perfect camouflage so irritating:

In just 11 years, two kinds of camouflage have turned into 10. And a simple aspect of the U.S. government has emerged as a complicated and expensive case study in federal duplication.

The military has spent $12 million developing its latest lines of ready-to-war garb.

No telling how much such duplication there is elsewhere in the defense budget where waste is tougher for taxpayers to judge.