Military Totemism and its Impact on Small Wars

[120mm]

Here is a summary of some thoughts I've had. I'm a little unclear on standards for references; most of my references will be through product catalogs, gov't documents, interviews, personal experiences and stuff I will dig up later.

What Color is Your Kalashnikov? Style, Fashion and Art In the Modern Military

A Paper designed to explore how culture influences the development and selection of individual military gear, to include small arms, in the modern military.

Historically, military weapons, armor and supporting gear has reflected society’s norms and fashions to varying degrees. The amount of organization and standardization has allowed greater and lesser degrees of individual style and fashion, depending on each society. Whereas a Frankish warrior’s arms and armor varied immensely in substance and style, a Roman legionnaire was more or less standard in appearance, even though there were uniform items which were culturally driven.

Beginning with industrialization and rationalization of forces in modern times, national military forces have become more and more monolithic in style. The pinnacle of standardization can be generalized in the US military forces in WWII, where soldiers were similarly equipped to a point where only a minority of special purpose personnel could be distinguished from the overall force. Starting with non-state actors since WWII, as well as the US Army in Viet Nam, standardization and uniformity in individual uniforms and gear has decreased in prevalence.

For those outside of the military subculture, modern military forces appear to be monolithic in style and pragmatic in substance, but in reality, modern military forces’ individual equipment is driven by style, fashion, culture and fads. The pursuit to look and be “in fashion” is strong within the military, and for some outside the military, imitation of these trends is very popular as well. Military personnel spend significant amounts of time and money to appear “up-to-date”, to the point of actually discarding useful equipment with slightly dated, or unpopular designs or camouflage patterns.

Individual weapons are equipped with a multitude of accessories and camouflage painting has reached the level of fine art. Entire internet forums exist for the sole purpose of showing off the accessorizing and camouflage painting of individual weapons.

References for the paper will include personal experience, interviews with producers of military personal equipment, product catalogs, end users of that equipment, as well as unclassified government documents.

Feel free to make suggestions.