Space Force must be suitably armored


You may have heard that the Space Force has announced what their uniforms will look like — boring bog-standard army camo. Many people are mocking this decision, and rightly so. There is only one acceptable choice for the Space Force uniform, and this is it:

Obviously, that’s an officer’s uniform…I imagine there will be variants for various ranks, and something less intimidating for the privates. Some kind of simple armor, perhaps? A helmet with a slit for the eyes? I’ll leave the design for the lesser ranks to others.

Comments

  1. says

    Clear evidence that the Space Invaders crew are never going into actual Outer Space. Camo is good for blending in at the amusement arcade on base.

  2. says

    The Russians always used orange for a very good reason. The high visibility makes recovery search and rescue much easier. Sometimes things go wrong. Voskhod 2 landed in the mountains of Kazakhstan in the middle of nowhere in March, when the bears were waking up and hungry. The location was so remote, they had to ski out. This is why the suits are brightly colored.

  3. whheydt says

    Go with the Galactic Patrol (E. E. Smith, “Lensman” series) scheme. Space black and silver. The really top notch ones can wear unadorned gray leather.

  4. fentex says

    While I think it’s a perfectly pleasant joke to make fun of the uniforms, anyone who’s seriously complaining about ‘woodland camouflage in space’ is being foolish.

    No personal uniform camouflage is relevant to a space force so it makes perfect sense to use the same mass produced equipment as everyone else, especially given the ONLY time a camouflage capability will be of use would be during actions on Earth.

    Makes much more sense to make fun of the ‘Spaceforce’ on it’s merits – or lack there of..

  5. some bastard on the internet says

    @ fentex #7

    Most standard military uniforms are monochromatic, camouflage fatigues are typically only issued to soldiers who are in areas where it might be useful. That’s why all of our soldiers in the Middle East wear tan fatigues.

  6. Ishikiri says

    I think it’s the perfect uniform choice for an organization to which no one put any thought at all. If they had done, they would have concluded that the whole thing was a bad idea. But apparently, President Fuckboy’s education consisted of a stream of shitty Hanna-Barbera cartoons and there are no adults in the room.

  7. wzrd1 says

    I say, Master Chief, from Halo armor, mixed with original series Cylon Centurion armor, mouse gray.
    Tried to track a gray house mouse, was a royal PIA and I see into long wave UV and short length IR (so black lights are blinding, IR night vision device illuminators are a dull dark red to me), thanks to removed cataracts.
    Add in eye lenses less vulnerable than Master Chief’s, looking sad.
    Covered with a micrometer garment, also mouse gray.
    If my own team can’t find me, I failed to properly train them and deserve abandonment.

    Well, that or the old MIT pressure suitless spacesuit, basically lycra and spandex, in a constricting garment nearly impossible to don under 1G, with a micrometeor and insulation overgarment done in fluorescent orange, with pink and purple polka dots.
    Failing that, same colors in tartan.
    With a peacock tail, full spectrum refraction, please.
    That’d make nearly 2/3 of a SEP field.

  8. psychomath says

    @ fentex #7

    Well, that and nobody in Space Force is actually going to be fighting in space. Some of the jokes are pretty funny, though.

  9. Dunc says

    I was more hoping for Adeptus Astartes power armour… What could be more appropriate than the armour worn by a brotherhood of insane warrior monks sworn to the service of an undead tyrant whose existence and continued rule over his paranoid, fascist theocratic state is only sustained by a constant stream of human sacrifice?

  10. says

    Given that Space Force was Trump’s idea it’s surprising their uniforms don’t have so much bling even the most egotistical totalitarian strongman would think them gaudy.

  11. cvoinescu says

    wzrd1 @ 11:

    I believe most people see the night vision IR illuminators, simply because the spectrum of
    850 nm LEDs includes a very small amount of visible light. I, for one, do. 960 nm LEDs, such as the ones used in IR remote controls, are truly invisible. Because the commonly used CCD and CMOS camera sensors are a lot less sensitive at 960 nm, the longer wavelength LEDs are not used in IR illuminators — unless trying to be stealthy. (They still show up quite brightly on phone cameras, so not that stealthy, really.)

    When I read about UV vision after lens replacement surgery, there was no mention of IR. Next time you look at an IR illuminator, ask someone else if they see it glowing dimly red too. I bet they do.

  12. Crimson Clupeidae says

    some bastard on the internet,that’s not at all true in the US.

    The USAF wears camo every day, to their office jobs. They only wear blues one day a month. They are currently transitioning from the older pattern to the newer one (I forget the names). I think the navy does its own thing, but I’m not sure these days.

    Pilots still wear jumpsuits (usually the standard olive drab) when flying.

  13. jrkrideau says

    @ 19 Crimson Clupeidae
    The USAF wears camo every day, to their office jobs.

    The mind boggles. The USAF intends to fight to the last paperclip?

  14. simonhadley says

    @20 Former air force here: yep, those paperclips are valuable assets and must be protected at all costs. Seriously though, the Airman Battle Uniform (ABU) is preferable to blues any day for comfort and practicality. What I miss are the old woodland camo BDUs. They were very comfortable and pretty affordable. Today’s new uniforms are expensive and the company that makes them (Proffer) is gouging service members for every penny they can get. I’d love to see some journalist dig into the whole uniform selection process for all the services because I guarantee there would be serious graft and kickbacks involved. The uniform selection for space farce is going to end up as a colossal failure by design so they can then redesign it to be “better.” Of course the service members will have to buy whole new sets again.

  15. rrhain says

    It’s just a rebranding of the Air Force Space Command, so yeah.

    You must remember that this is typical Trump: He doesn’t actually build anything. He simply takes something that other people made and sticks his name on it.

    The Air Force has had a division that deals with space for decades. It was originally created in 1982 to consolidate missions regarding missile warning and space launches that were previously carried out by other commands within the Air Force. Originally called US Space Command, it was renamed Air Force Space Command in 1985.

    In 2016, the Space Mission Force was developed to deal with attacks in space with creations of Space Wings (a “wing” is the rough Air Force equivalent to a brigade in the Army.) Air Force Space Command is based in Peterson AFB in Colorado.

    As an Air Force brat and one who worked for the Air Force as a contractor, I take a bit of umbrage at people making fun of the Air Force’s space mission. The way the military has been arranged, the Army is responsible for the land which includes non-war functions like the Army Corps of Engineers. The Navy manages the water with oceanographic missions. And the Air Force manages the air. My sister works as a chemist for them.

    Who do you think manages satellite launches for the military? Communications, GPS, weather, intelligence, all of that is space. And then they need to be protected and monitored against hostile activity.

    When people think of war in space, they naturally think of some sci-fi battle with lasers and pew! pew! effects, but that isn’t what it means. Those missiles that get fired and go through transorbital trajectories? Who do you think manages them? The Russians just announced a hypersonic missile. Who do you think on our side is going to respond to that?

    So yes. We’ve had a “Space Force” for nearly 40 years.

    We just didn’t call it the “Space Force” and it wasn’t a separate branch of the military.

    That’s all Trump has done: Given it a new name and separated it from the Air Force.

    Kinda like how the Air Force used to be part of the Army until it got rebranded and separated.