CLOSE The Pentagon has apparently spent $28 million dollars on “forest” camouflaged Afghanistan military uniforms rather than give them other patterns that cost nothing. Josh King has the story (@abridgetoland). Buzz60 
 
 An Afghan soldier with an appropriate form of uniform. (Photo: Kay Johnson, AP) 
 
 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon wasted as much as $28 million over the past decade buying uniforms for the Afghan army with a woodland camouflage pattern appropriate for a tiny fraction of that war-torn country, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. 
 
 The Afghan Defense Minister picked the pricey, privately owned “forest” color pattern over free camouflage schemes owned by the U.S. government, according to an advance copy of the report due out on Wednesday. The scathing, 17-page study notes that “forests cover only 2.1% of Afghanistan’s total land area.” 
 
 “My concern is what if the minister of defense liked purple, or liked pink?” John Sopko, the special inspector general, told USA TODAY in an interview. “Are we going to buy pink uniforms for soldiers and not ask questions? That’s insane. This is just simply stupid on its face. We wasted $28 million of taxpayers’ 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?” 
 
 John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. (Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP) 
 
 For years, Sopko’s office has scalded the Pentagon for squandering tens of millions of dollars of the $66 billion Congress has appropriated to train, equip and house Afghan security forces. Wednesday’s installment on uniforms was particularly pungent, noting that special tailoring — zippers instead of buttons — boosted the cost of uniforms of already dubious value. 
 
 The report’s release comes as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis considers sending thousands more U.S. troops to bolster beleaguered Afghan forces in what has become America’s longest war. Afghan troops face a resurgent Taliban insurgency, an offshoot of the Islamic State (ISIS), and other terrorist groups. 
 
 The Pentagon has spent $93 million on the uniforms since 2007. Switching to a camouflage pattern owned by the U.S. military could save taxpayers as much as $71 million over the next decade, the inspector general found. 
 
 The Pentagon, in its written response, didn’t quibble with the findings. Instead, in a letter to Sopko, the military acknowledged the need for a cost-benefit analysis “to determine whether there is a more effective alternative, considering both operational environment and cost.” 
 
 No camouflage for bad decisions 
 
 Reaction to Sopko’s findings was swift and sharp. 
 
 “You’d think the Pentagon would have had a good handle on how to pick the right camouflage for uniforms,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican and senior member of the Budget and Finance committees, said in a statement. “Instead, the Defense Department gave up control of the purchase and spent an extra $28 million on the wrong pattern just because someone in Afghanistan liked it. It’s embarrassing and an affront to U.S. taxpayers. Those who wasted money on the wrong camouflage uniforms seem to have lost sight of their common sense.” 
 
 The decision to buy the woodland-pattern uniform dates to 2007. For the previous five years, Afghan soldiers had been issued a “hodgepodge” of uniforms donated from several nations, according to the report. Early in 2007, the Afghan Defense Ministry decided it needed a “new and distinctive uniform” to set the Afghan army apart. 
 
 CLOSE The United States is not winning in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress on Tuesday, saying he was crafting a new war strategy to brief lawmakers about by mid-July that is widely expected to call for thousands more U.S. troops Time 
 
 In February 2007, U.S. officials training the Afghan army cruised the internet for camouflage patterns. In an email, the officials “ran across” camouflage from a company called HyperStealth and showed them to Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak. He “liked what he saw,” the report says. 
 
 By May, Wardak had selected the “Forest” pattern, and U.S. officials made the decision to buy 1,364,602 uniforms and 88,010 extra pairs of pants “without conducting any formal testing to determine the pattern's effectiveness for use in Afghanistan,” according to the report. 
 
 The report, however, raises questions about the utility of forest camouflage in a country that “on the whole is dry, falling within the Desert or Desert Steppe climate classification,” according to the National Climatic Data Center. 
 
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 The Pentagon also could have recommended camouflage patterns the military owns but no longer uses. Those uniforms “may have been equally effective in the Afghan environment” and with fewer alterations, like zippers, could have saved as much as $28 million. 
 
 “We had camouflage patterns,” Sopko said. “Dozens of them. For free!” 
 
 The inspector general’s report concludes that neither the Pentagon nor the Afghan government knows if the uniform still being issued there is “appropriate to the Afghan environment, or whether it actually hinders their operations by providing a more clearly visible target to the enemy.” 
 
 Those soldiers may be the ultimate losers in the uniform debacle, Sopko said. 
 
 “I feel sorry for the poor Afghan soldiers,” Sopko said. “I mean they’re walking around with a target on their backs, ‘Shoot me.’ Because only 2% of the country is forest woodland, and that’s the outfit that the Afghan minister picked.” 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Woodland Battle Dress Uniform worn by Afghan commandos (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Dustin Payne) 
 
 Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Dustin Payne 
 
 Uniforms used by ANA conventional forces with Spec4ce Forest Uniform pattern. (Defense Department photo by Pfc. David Devich) 
 
 Photo Credit: Defense Department photo by Pfc. David Devich 
 
 WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is under fire for spending nearly $28 million procuring camouflage uniforms for the Afghan army, gear suited for environments so rare they account for just 2 percent of Afghanistan's countryside, according to a new watchdog report.The Defense Department organization overseeing efforts to train and equip Afghan forces supervised selection and design of the new proprietary woodland camouflage pattern without proper testing and assessment, according to the report published Wednesday by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.For years, Afghan conventional forces and elite commandos have fielded the U.S. Army’s woodland pattern utility uniforms. In 2007, the Afghan Defense Ministry embarked on a quest to design new uniforms to counter efforts by the Taliban and militants battling government forces to counterfeit the clothing.The new uniform was designed in similar fashion to the current uniform worn by the U.S. Army, called the Army Combat Uniform, but at a much higher cost, the inspector general determined.According to the report, the HyperStealth’s Spec4ce Forest camouflage pattern was chosen by the then-Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak — because he liked what he saw while browsing a website.“This is just simply stupid on its face. We wasted $28 million of taxpayers’ 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?” said John Sopko, the inspector general, in an interview with USA Today Picking uniform patterns for specific environments requires formal testing and evaluation, a process that can be a “an extremely fussy and demanding experimental design problem,” said Dr. Timothy O’Neill, creator of the camouflage pattern which served as the basis for the Army Combat Uniform. “Desert designs don’t work well in woodland areas and woodland patterns perform poorly in the desert.”The U.S. government already had the rights to multiple camouflage pattern schemes that could have been provided to the Afghan army at no cost.Furthermore, the “DOD was unable to provide documentation demonstrating that the Spec4ce Forest specification was essential to the U.S. government’s requirement, or documentation justifying and approving the Spec4ce Forest requirement in the ANA uniform specification,” the report reads.Propriety uniforms cost significantly more to produce because vendors seeking to supply the Afghan military with its uniform needs are required to “purchase pre-patterned material, or obtain the rights to use the proprietary pattern from HyperStealth or an authorized licensee, according to the report.The new uniforms now cost 40 percent to 43 percent more at about $45 to $80 per set.Sopko has recommended conducting a cost-benefit analysis and consider changing the Afghan camouflage uniforms, which could save taxpayers $70 million over the next 10 years.
– Just one week after defense chief James Mattis told a Senate panel the US is "not winning in Afghanistan," a new report reveals that the US wasted $28 million on the wrong kind of uniforms for Afghan army soldiers. In 2007, the Pentagon allowed the Afghan defense minister to pick expensive woodland-camouflage patterns from a private company rather than free camouflage schemes from the government, reports USA Today. This despite the fact that forest makes up only 2.1% of Afghanistan's land area. The revelation is in a newly released report from Afghan special inspector general John Sopko. “This is just simply stupid on its face," he tells the newspaper. "If he thought pink or chartreuse was it, would we have done that?” A decade ago, US military consultants decided the Afghan army needed a more distinct uniform, in part to make it harder for the Taliban to stage attacks in counterfeit uniforms, reports the Military Times. The consultants showed then-Afghan defense chief Abdul Rahim Wardak pictures of "forest" uniforms they found on the internet, and he "liked what he saw," according to the report. The Pentagon bought more than 1.3 million of the uniforms and 88,000 extra pairs of pants “without conducting any formal testing to determine the pattern's effectiveness for use in Afghanistan.” The report comes at a sensitive time: Afghan troops are in the midst of a multi-front conflict with both the Taliban and an ISIS offshoot, and earlier this month President Trump gave Mattis the authority to increase troop levels.