US Army armor in Europe painted for the desert

[MillCreek]

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-ironhorse-brigade-armor-unit-training-to-travel-around-europe-2018-5?utm_source=feedburner&amp%3Butm_medium=referral&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29

So with all the sensors and what not, is it no longer necessary for European theater armor to be painted green or woodland camo?  Everything is painted for the desert now?

[Scout26]

These vehicles belong to 1ABCT-1CAV based out of Hood.  They are only there for 9 months, then they go back to Hood.  So they are still tan to reflect the Mid-East mission (where we are actually fighting).  There is a Combined Arms Task Force (Battalion+) of vehicles stationed at Vilseck/Grafenwoehr for "rotational" units to come and use when they come for a either a major exercise (Saber Strike or Allied Spirit i.e. what we used to call Caravan Guard and REFORGER*) or a month-long or so training mission.  (Fly over, pull the equipment out of storage, do some gunnery, hang with the NATO allies, put the equipment back, fly home.)  Those vehicles are woodland camouflage.  

Shipping vehicles back and forth to Europe is a PITA.  What with customs and cleanliness rules. (See nematodes.)  That's one reason we went to POMCUS sites back in the bad ol' days.

So this is really an exercise to test the ability to ship equipment from the US to Europe, an ability that we really haven't tested/utilized since the end of the Cold War.

So probably they main reason these are brown is that it's a PITA to repaint vehicles (and they'd have to do it twice), as in ship the vehicle to a depot in the US (Like Anniston), totally strip them of everything, paint them, and then re-assemble them.   They can go play in Europe while painted brown.

[Devonai]

Not just an answer, but a well informed and comprehensive answer.  You win the internets for today.

[Scout26]

Actually, I left some things out.  When Vietnam started to heat up, the NATO allies worried that the US was being distracted, and wanted to make sure that should the balloon go up we could still defend western Europe, thus the annual REFORGER (REturn of FORces to GERmany) exercise concept was born.  It started as shipping entire Armored Division with all their equipment and other stuff from the US to Germany in 1963.

This help demonstrate US resolve to defend western Europe, and give US based troops a chance to actually go over the ground where they would fight.  It also helped to show that we could do the "Ten Divisions in Ten Days"  (From the US to Europe), should things get serious.  By having a metric buttload of stuff stored in Europe, all we had to do was fly the troops and their personal gear from the US to Europe, they'd go to their POMCUS (Pre-positoning Of Material Configured to Unit Sets)*, and roll out to their GDP (General or Ground Defense Plan)* locations and either get ready to fight or begin fighting, depending on where we were in the "crisis". 

For example, on the north side of the MTA in Baumholder were the Winterhauch and Nahbollenbach depots.  They were maintained and guarded  by Civilian Support Guards.  In the late 1980's they were mostly 50-60ish men, who had been "Displace Persons" at the end of WWII found that their homes were on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and they may or may not have any family left.  So the US Army gave them a job, a uniform, and a place to live (in on-site barracks).  Most were originally from Central and Eastern Europe, spoke German and English as their 2nd and 3rd languages, and were surprisingly loyal to the US.  There were also quite a few German Nationals as, the original guards aged and retired, a gig as employee for the US Army was pretty much a lifetime guarantee, and in many of the rural areas (like around Baumholder) was one of the better paying jobs.  (For a deeper dive into CSG units in USAREUR, see http://usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?http&&&usarmygermany.com/Units/HqUSAREUR/USAREUR_LaborSvc.htm   As Deputy PM and Operations Officer, I was responsible to make the MP Duty Officer was going around to the various locations (we had two ammo depots and the aforementioned POMCUS sites as part of our area of responsibility) and make sure the guards were posted, awake, and periodically walking the perimeters.  I worked with the leadership of the various CSG units to make sure they were doing what we paid them to do.


* - When your parents come to visit you, do NOT tell your mother that GDP really stands for "German Death Place", as our anticipated mission was to be speedbumps to give the Ten Divisions time to arrive.  It gives her the vapors...

See also: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-lovely-little-town-that-would-have-been-absolutely-screwed-by-world-war-iii-933229e2ea52

[MechAg94]

I saw a youtube video talking about the US Army doing visual camouflage exercises for their armor in Europe.  I thought it was a new video, but apparently not as I can't find it now.  It seemed to indicate they weren't going with woodland camo paint schemes, but they were practicing other concealment methods.