Battle Dress Uniform
BDU is the name of the military uniform that the armed forces of the United States have used as their standard uniform for combat situations since September 1981. These uniforms are called battle dress uniforms, because they are intended for use during 'battles', as opposed to 'garrison' dress uniforms worn at parades and functions.
Battle Dress Uniforms do not have a specific recognizable style; they may be either plain colored or in many different patterns of camouflage colors. Although one would expect that any standard uniform designed for use during combat would be called a Battle Dress Uniform, particular newer designs of uniform, such as the Army Combat Uniform are said to "replace" the Battle Dress Uniform, suggesting that only uniforms designed somewhere around the 1980s are called Battle Dress Uniforms.
Introduction
The Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) appeared in September 1981 in Woodland pattern, a four-color development in the earlier ERDL pattern. It used two shades of green, one of brown, and black on a cotton-nylon mix. It was issued in two variants, a lighter temperate-weather design, and a heavier cotton winter-weight variant.
Replacements
In 1991, the U.S. military partly replaced the Battle Dress Uniform by environment-specific uniforms, notably the six-color "chocolate-chip camouflage" (designed in 1962) and "night-time desert grid", worn in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Both were discontinued after the war. In 1992, desert uniforms in three-colour desert camouflage were introduced, the Desert Camouflage Uniform (DCU). These were worn in operations in Somalia (1993) and currently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Desert Camouflage Uniform was, at some point, partly replaced by another uniform, the Desert BDU (Desert Battle Dress Uniform), which had a three-color pattern.
The Marine Corps replaced the Battle Dress Uniform by the Marine Corps Combat Utility Uniform, which uses the computer-generated MARPAT pattern and has front pockets that lean inwards. Approved for wear in June 2001, the change-over was completed October 1, 2004.
By 2007, the Army had largely replaced the BDU with the new Army Combat Uniform (ACU). This new uniform uses a pixelated pattern like MARPAT, but uses less saturated colors. The neutral colors, foliage green and sand, are designed to be used in desert, woodland, and urban combat situations. The program to replace the Battle Dress Uniform ran from 2005 to 2007.
