Desert Tri-Color and DNC
DESERT TRI-COLOR AND DNC
Two camouflage patterns built for the Gulf, one for the day and one for the night
CASE FILE // UNITED STATES
When the U.S. military went to the Persian Gulf in 1990, it took three desert patterns with it, and none of them was quite the right one.
One was for the daytime and was already too old. One was for the nighttime and was even older. The third was the replacement, and it was still on a ship when the shooting stopped.
This is the story of the night pattern and the replacement: Desert Night Camouflage and Desert Tri-Color.
FIRST, THE CHOCOLATE CHIP
You can't explain either of them without the six-color Desert Battle Dress Uniform, better known as "Chocolate Chip" or "Cookie Dough." It had a light tan base, pale green swathes, two-tone brown bands, and clusters of black and white spots meant to look like pebbles and their shadows (Wikipedia).
It was modeled on the deserts of the American Southwest, came out of a test program kicked off by the Arab–Israeli wars, and went into limited issue in 1981 for the new Rapid Deployment Force. Photos even show it on Operation Eagle Claw, the failed Iran hostage rescue in April 1980 (Wikipedia).
The trouble was that Saudi Arabia is not Southern California. Soldiers in the Gulf said it "contrasted too much with the terrain," the dark patches got hot in the sun and held the heat, and the six colors made it expensive to print (Wikipedia). (Essentially, it's a perfect pattern for hiding in a rock garden.)
DESERT NIGHT CAMOUFLAGE: CAMO FOR THE ROBOTS
DNC is the stranger of the two, and the one people stop and ask about.
It wasn't designed to hide you from human eyes. It's a two-color grid pattern built to defeat Soviet night vision devices (Wikipedia). The idea was that the grid and blotches would break up your image on an NVD screen. The colors are officially Light Green 426 for the ground and a Dark Green 425 "grid-and-rubble" print over the top, according to a 1986 spec, MIL-C-44034C (Wikipedia).
It's older than most people think. The earliest known photos are from May 1972, field tests ran at Fort Bliss in 1976, and experimental parkas and trousers date to 1978 (Wikipedia). The parka was based on the M1951 "fishtail" parka and the snow overwhites, and the set was meant to be worn over the Chocolate Chip uniform at night.
So did it work? Not really.
During the Gulf War, a Marine scout/sniper section ran its own night test through an AN/PVS-5. DNC showed up more than the daytime desert uniform, and more than the winter overwhites too (Wikipedia). It may have worked against 1970s night vision, but by the early '90s the tech had moved on and the grid could make you easier to spot (Breach Bang Clear). (Camouflage that makes you more visible. That's the military procurement process at its best.)
To its credit, the parka was warm, and the Saudi desert gets cold at night in winter (Breach Bang Clear). It's probably the only camo pattern ever whose main selling point turned out to be the insulation.
DNC was dropped almost right after the war, and it was gone by the time the U.S. returned to Iraq in 2003. Infrared-reflective treatments built into the later uniforms did the job better than a grid-printed overlayer ever could (Wikipedia).
DESERT TRI-COLOR: "COFFEE STAIN"
While all that was going on, Natick was already building a fix for the Chocolate Chip.
The lab measured the optical and infrared reflectance of sand and soil samples from the Middle East, printed seven trial patterns, and tested them in 14 desert locations before choosing a winner. "Desert Camouflage Pattern: Combat" was standardized in 1990, but it wasn't ready in time. Troops fought the Gulf War in six-color, and the first shipment of the new uniforms was still on the way when the fighting ended (Wikipedia).
The new Desert Camouflage Uniform, or DCU, was issued in the early '90s. Its large pale green and light tan shapes with thin reddish-brown patches earned it the nickname "Coffee Stain" (Wikipedia). Three colors instead of six, cheaper to make, and a much better match for the actual terrain.
The handover was messy. In Somalia, during Restore Hope and Gothic Serpent, troops wore both patterns, and some Rangers wore three-color uniforms with six-color helmet covers. Black Hawk Down puts the Rangers in tri-color, though photos from the time show many still wearing Chocolate Chip (Breach Bang Clear). Tri-color went on to be the uniform of the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
THE REVERSIBLE CONNECTION
The two patterns ended up together for a reason. The surplus stores of the early-to-mid '90s were full of DNC parkas and trousers the military had sold off, and private companies began copying the pattern. One source describes a reversible jacket with DNC on one side and tri-color DCU on the other, and says some Special Forces operators bought them and took them to Afghanistan and Iraq (Breach Bang Clear).
That's the night pattern and the day pattern of one war, sewn together back to back. It's a very '90s combination.
DNC also gets credit as a forerunner of the Army's UCP digital pattern, which was "only universal in that it was marginally effective everywhere and not particularly good anywhere" (Breach Bang Clear). We'll leave that one alone.
WHY IT'S IN THE MANIFEST
Desert Storm was the last big war of the Cold War military: the gear, the patterns, and the doctrine were all built to fight the Soviets, then used in the Gulf instead. DNC and tri-color capture the beginning and end of that changeover.
In the manifest now:
- DNC / Desert Tri-Color Reversible Woobie Jacket, with both patterns in one jacket
- DNC Hooded Combat Shirt
- Desert Tri-Color Hooded Combat Shirt – Brown Chest
- DBDU "Chocolate Chip" Hooded Combat Shirt, the pattern that started it all
- Topps Desert Storm Trading Card Pack, because 1991 wasn't complete without them
SOUTHERN AIR TRADE // THE MANIFEST