New Royal Navy Warfare Officer pin

[dimsum]

It doesn't matter what accoutrements and sort of tom foolery the dress committee comes up with to put on our uniforms. If the person wearing it looks kind of slovenly and the uniforms were cut with fabric the CAF procured from the Walmart discount aisle, we will look like garbage.

case in point:


So why do our uniforms generally look like garbage?

The best looking person with the shiniest shoes shouldn't be the 4-Star Marine General. We need to start taking our cues from the Mounties., we should hire whoever sits on their dress committee and have them revamp our entire look!

I agree in principle. However:

• The French/Spanish units are light infantry (or SOF-like? I don't know what French Paras fall under). I'm going to assume that the French pictures are of the Bastille Day parades, and the Spanish Foreign Legion is from another parade. They're going to have their best out on parade knowing that cameras are on.
• The US picture is their Rangers. If we had a picture of CSOR on parade, people wouldn't think we were slovenly either.
• The USMC General wears patent leather shoes. All of the US forces wear them for parade uniforms. Why we don't allow patent leather shoes for parade but allow them for "normal" wear is beyond me.
• We don't generally have "honour guards" selected for ceremonial duties, excepting the CG. Should we have something like the Australian Defence Force's Federation Guard or the Bundeswehr's Wachbatallion, which is selected out of Basic Training, rather than whoever is around on a Tues afternoon?

I also think our RCAF DEU is a weird shade of blue. It missed an opportunity to return to the pre-Unification colour (if not cut) when it changed the button and rank colour.

Anyways, this has strayed a ton from the original thread. Mods - feel free to move.

 

[daftandbarmy]

All that is meant is that you don't wear a necktie with the officer's short sleeve shirt.

Because we know what happens when you allow stuff like that, right?

 

[Bob Sakomano]

Because we know what happens when you allow stuff like that, right?

Yeah, with a white short sleeve shirt and black tie, we look like... airline pilots.

 

[RedFive]

It doesn't matter what accoutrements and sort of tom foolery the dress committee comes up with to put on our uniforms. If the person wearing it looks kind of slovenly and the uniforms were cut with fabric the CAF procured from the Walmart discount aisle, we will look like garbage.

case in point:

French Paras - ridiculous uniform with ridiculous colours and flamboyant scarfs. By god do they look well turned out wearing them though!

Good god, look at that V-Neck!

Marines.... A little on the conservative side but by god do they look well turned out!

Even the US Army manages to make the arguably the worst looking uniforms and berets in NATO (next to us of course) somehow look good because their troops are well turned out!

Our friends in the other Miliarized Arm of the Government of Canada certainly know how to look fantastic on parade:

So why do our uniforms generally look like garbage?

The best looking person with the shiniest shoes shouldn't be the 4-Star Marine General. We need to start taking our cues from the Mounties., we should hire whoever sits on their dress committee and have them revamp our entire look!

Sweet baby Jesus no you don't.

Despite an inquiry into a mass shooting where Mounties were the one and only target (Moncton), as well as the perpetrator stating on record that the goofy looking grey shirts and fluorescent yellow cavalry stripes gave them away from hundreds of metres away, our Uniform and Dress people still refuse to change them because "that's what the public expects to see when they call the RCMP". The inquiry found the stripes were a dead give away, and the contrast between blue pants, blue external vest and grey shirt made it easy to take up a point of aim.

They even did an officially commissioned survey of a random selection of the public about what their thoughts were with regard to the stripes, grey vs blue shirts, external vs internal vest, tattoos and beards. Overwhelming verdict? We don't care what they're wearing as long as they look switched on and professional, with the overwhelming factor being personal fitness. That study got buried. Trials have been done of alternate kit, all of them conclude with no change to the uniform.

Also our patrol kit is the lowest quality garbage imaginable. We look like slovenly riff raff standing next to any of our municipal counterparts.

I will allow the dress uniform is nice, but a fully turned out Mountie in Red Serge and Strathcona boots costs more to the taxpayer than a fully turned out General Duty patrol member. Figure that one out...

 

[Booter]

Sweet baby Jesus no you don't.

Despite an inquiry into a mass shooting where Mounties were the one and only target (Moncton), as well as the perpetrator stating on record that the goofy looking grey shirts and fluorescent yellow cavalry stripes gave them away from hundreds of metres away, our Uniform and Dress people still refuse to change them because "that's what the public expects to see when they call the RCMP". The inquiry found the stripes were a dead give away, and the contrast between blue pants, blue external vest and grey shirt made it easy to take up a point of aim.

They even did an officially commissioned survey of a random selection of the public about what their thoughts were with regard to the stripes, grey vs blue shirts, external vs internal vest, tattoos and beards. Overwhelming verdict? We don't care what they're wearing as long as they look switched on and professional, with the overwhelming factor being personal fitness. That study got buried. Trials have been done of alternate kit, all of them conclude with no change to the uniform.

Also our patrol kit is the lowest quality garbage imaginable. We look like slovenly riff raff standing next to any of our municipal counterparts.

Are you ever going to offer a solution or is it always just going to be a nonstop barrage of things you don’t like about your unit?

Lateral man. You hate the RCMP. We get it.

To be fair to you, I don’t know the situation on the ground in the LMD but it seems to be unsalvageable.

 

[Booter]

Maybe that was an unfair outburst, it’s the internet and a message board. It doesn’t mean it’s your real life persona- it just seems like it’s a posting pattern, and it’s not fair to lump you in like that,

I was just a little shocked to see that jump off from a comment on dress uniforms. Sorry I aggro’d you.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Sweet baby Jesus no you don't.

Despite an inquiry into a mass shooting where Mounties were the one and only target (Moncton), as well as the perpetrator stating on record that the goofy looking grey shirts and fluorescent yellow cavalry stripes gave them away from hundreds of metres away, our Uniform and Dress people still refuse to change them because "that's what the public expects to see when they call the RCMP". The inquiry found the stripes were a dead give away, and the contrast between blue pants, blue external vest and grey shirt made it easy to take up a point of aim.

They even did an officially commissioned survey of a random selection of the public about what their thoughts were with regard to the stripes, grey vs blue shirts, external vs internal vest, tattoos and beards. Overwhelming verdict? We don't care what they're wearing as long as they look switched on and professional, with the overwhelming factor being personal fitness. That study got buried. Trials have been done of alternate kit, all of them conclude with no change to the uniform.

Also our patrol kit is the lowest quality garbage imaginable. We look like slovenly riff raff standing next to any of our municipal counterparts.

I will allow the dress uniform is nice, but a fully turned out Mountie in Red Serge and Strathcona boots costs more to the taxpayer than a fully turned out General Duty patrol member. Figure that one out...

I was only being semi-serious with my above post. In all honesty though, the RCMP Dress Uniform looks phenomenal. I do agree though that the General Duty Uniform is pretty SUS

@dimsum the RCAF Uniforms w/wedge look like a hotdog maker outfit, #Changemymind and yes my above post was a semi-troll job. But seriously, when a 4-star USMC GOFO rolls up to NDHQ and stands out amongst every single one of our Honour Guard, you know our uniforms are absolute gash!

 

[RangerRay]

@dimsum the RCAF Uniforms w/wedge look like a hotdog maker outfit, #Changemymind and yes my above post was a semi-troll job. But seriously, when a 4-star USMC GOFO rolls up to NDHQ and stands out amongst every single one of our Honour Guard, you know our uniforms are absolute gash!

Or at least group the services separately. Mixing them together looks terrible.

 

[dimsum]

@dimsum the RCAF Uniforms w/wedge look like a hotdog maker outfit, #Changemymind

No disagreement there. If we had peaked caps that didn't look awful and didn't hurt wearing them, I'd suggest that.

Or at least group the services separately. Mixing them together looks terrible.

Yeah. That didn't make any sense.

 

[FSTO]

When Prince William and Princess Catherine visited Victoria the RCN put together a 100 person guard of all Navy. Looked goddamn outstanding!



And not a white glove to be seen at all.

 

[RedFive]

Maybe that was an unfair outburst, it’s the internet and a message board. It doesn’t mean it’s your real life persona- it just seems like it’s a posting pattern, and it’s not fair to lump you in like that,

I was just a little shocked to see that jump off from a comment on dress uniforms. Sorry I aggro’d you.

No apology necessary, its true I have been fairly vocal about the issues I have with my current employer. There are many good things on the go too, and I hope many of the issues we have will be solved in short order.

I think you can agree, the overwhelming majority of the things I have complained about directly affect officer safety. Obsolete guns, antiquated uniforms, poor quality equipment. I take my safety, the safety of my colleagues, and the safety of the public very seriously, as is my job. But when I'm working in the dark, with my pistol out and flashlight in other hand, one of them needs to be holstered to do literally anything else (door handle anyone?), leaving me blind or defenceless. For no other reason than we use pistols from 1994, multiple studies into replacements be damned.

When members were being gunned down en masse and couldn't hide, that was at least in part because some Sergeant Major somewhere cant stand to think about Mounties in blue shirts without stripes, despite almost every other unit in the Force wearing blue shirts and stripeless pants. Between Mayerthorpe and Moncton it took the deaths of 7 members, a labour code conviction and 2 studies on those shootings to get us carbines and hard body armour.

I don't complain at length about the extra duty pay process, the garbage pay stubs, taking months to receive said extra duty pay... why? Because while aggravating, they don't put me or my colleagues in danger. All I want is the RCMP to collectively stop using "because that's the way it's always been" as an excuse.

I'd be happy to discuss further by PM, this is a Navy dress uniform thread after all.

Edit to add one last thought. The "if you don't like it, leave" attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place.

 

[Booter]

Edit to add one last thought. The "if you don't like it, leave" attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place.

PM me whenever you’d like. I’m intimately familiar with lots of what you’re talking about in your post and I’d agree. I’ve also designed programs and made kit recommendations for large municipal forces that issued complete garbage- or chase the latest training fad. And I’ve been in the command post of municipal agencies and been underwhelmed by some of the practices. (And I have also had the exact opposite experience)

For me the key is- observe fault, recommend solution. I have historically had difficulty getting people to do the latter.

I recently had a sgt major say that the biggest lesson they learned from all our large incidents over the last few years is that we have to be wearing issued kit only,

If you re familiar with the training gaps identified- this was a jaw dropping suggestion. It is typical of the disconnect of our warrant program.

I appreciate you not taking that to heart. I cant type or spell or use the quote function properly on here- so I’d be mortified if someone assumed that was “me”. I won’t make the same assumption about you- it’s not like you’re “wrong”.

And in the thread- mixing all the elements uniforms has always looked “wrong” to my eye, hard to look like a uniformed group.

 

[RedFive]

PM me whenever you’d like. I’m intimately familiar with lots of what you’re talking about in your post and I’d agree. I’ve also designed programs and made kit recommendations for large municipal forces that issued complete garbage- or chase the latest training fad. And I’ve been in the command post of municipal agencies and been underwhelmed by some of the practices. (And I have also had the exact opposite experience)

For me the key is- observe fault, recommend solution. I have historically had difficulty getting people to do the latter.

I recently had a sgt major say that the biggest lesson they learned from all our large incidents over the last few years is that we have to be wearing issued kit only,

If you re familiar with the training gaps identified- this was a jaw dropping suggestion. It is typical of the disconnect of our warrant program.

I appreciate you not taking that to heart. I cant type or spell or use the quote function properly on here- so I’d be mortified if someone assumed that was “me”. I won’t make the same assumption about you- it’s not like you’re “wrong”.

And in the thread- mixing all the elements uniforms has always looked “wrong” to my eye, hard to look like a uniformed group.

Seems we’re on the same page, with different experience levels and perceptions for sure. I’ll shoot you a PM when I have a little more time later in the week.

Now back to Naval Warfare Officer pins, or whatever…

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

No apology necessary, its true I have been fairly vocal about the issues I have with my current employer. There are many good things on the go too, and I hope many of the issues we have will be solved in short order.

I think you can agree, the overwhelming majority of the things I have complained about directly affect officer safety. Obsolete guns, antiquated uniforms, poor quality equipment. I take my safety, the safety of my colleagues, and the safety of the public very seriously, as is my job. But when I'm working in the dark, with my pistol out and flashlight in other hand, one of them needs to be holstered to do literally anything else (door handle anyone?), leaving me blind or defenceless. For no other reason than we use pistols from 1994, multiple studies into replacements be damned.

When members were being gunned down en masse and couldn't hide, that was at least in part because some Sergeant Major somewhere cant stand to think about Mounties in blue shirts without stripes, despite almost every other unit in the Force wearing blue shirts and stripeless pants. Between Mayerthorpe and Moncton it took the deaths of 7 members, a labour code conviction and 2 studies on those shootings to get us carbines and hard body armour.

I don't complain at length about the extra duty pay process, the garbage pay stubs, taking months to receive said extra duty pay... why? Because while aggravating, they don't put me or my colleagues in danger. All I want is the RCMP to collectively stop using "because that's the way it's always been" as an excuse.

I'd be happy to discuss further by PM, this is a Navy dress uniform thread after all.

Edit to add one last thought. The "if you don't like it, leave" attitude is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Are you sure you're not in the Navy? Those two statements are why the Navy is missing close to a quarter of their required sailors.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Are you sure you're not in the Navy? Those two statements are why the Navy is missing close to a quarter of their required sailors.

Or in some trades, over half.

 

[Good2Golf]

So why do our uniforms generally look like garbage?

The best looking person with the shiniest shoes shouldn't be the 4-Star Marine General. We need to start taking our cues from the Mounties., we should hire whoever sits on their dress committee and have them revamp our entire look!

The look on GEN Dunford’s face says it all…

 

[RedFive]

Are you sure you're not in the Navy? Those two statements are why the Navy is missing close to a quarter of their required sailors.

Are you suggesting that our respective long and storied institutions are in desperate need of a human resources shakeup and cash flow injection?

How does the saying go? Hundreds of years of tradition unimpeded by progress?

Yeah, that.