Don’t Reflective Armbands Defeat the Purpose of Camouflage?
Friendly identification and why the Ukrainians choose safety over camouflage.
Right around 1995, the U.S. Army started issuing yellow reflective Velcro ankle belts. They were to be worn during physical training — specifically to protect soldiers running on public roads at zero-dark-thirty.
By the time I was in the Air Force during the War on Terror, that cute little anklet had evolved into a full-blown reflective belt that we were forced to wear anytime we ventured out to the flight line to work on the AWACS.
After all, you never know when you might be run over by an errant Boeing 707.
After a while, different colors began to appear besides the normal fluorescent yellow: pink, blue, and green. If you were in the reflective belt manufacturing business in the mid-2000s, you were raking it in.
These reflective belts, and various versions of reflective tape, served an important safety purpose when we were on base. But once we deployed, the reflective belt got stowed away in the interest of operational security. After all, we didn’t want to make it any easier for the enemy to spot us when we were in a dangerous environment.
Well, technically, we still had to bring (and wear) our reflective belts in theater, but not when…
