Ranger Green

A new color for new gear

Ranger Green started with a request from U.S. Army special operations forces for a new color for body armor and load-carrying gear. Before September 2001, a shade called Mouse Grey had been in development, but it was judged too grey to work in the field. The dyes of the time were part of the problem. The fabric came out uneven, and its streaks grew worse the longer it spent outdoors.

The urgent needs of the first years after 9/11 pushed the project aside. It was revived in 2003, and this time the developers settled on a richer green. Army special operations also wanted common armor and load-carrying gear, which led to a version of the Maritime Load Carriage System already in use with Naval Special Warfare. The new shade was named Ranger Green after the Rangers, the first to receive gear made in it.

Color locked into the fiber

The cure for the streaking was in the fiber itself. Ranger Green became the first solution-dyed Cordura nylon made for military use. In solution dyeing, the color goes into the molten polymer before it is drawn out into fiber, so it runs all the way through each strand. The result matches from one batch to the next, resists fading in the sun and doesn't bleed.

That consistency matters more than it sounds. A plate carrier or a chest rig is sewn from fabric, webbing, binding and thread, often from different mills, and every part of it has to read as one green at a distance.

Why grey

For most of the 20th century, American military green meant olive. The Army moved its field uniforms and equipment to Olive Drab 7 in 1943, then in 1952 to Olive Green 107, a slightly greyer shade that lasted through the Vietnam War. Olive drab is a warm green, with yellow-brown undertones.

Ranger Green pulls away from that family on purpose. Grey undertones make it cooler and flatter, closer to slate than to olive, and it was meant for darker, denser country: heavy foliage, shade, and the low light of dusk and dawn. Under an overcast sky the difference from OD green is easy to see. In direct sun the two move closer together.

From special operations to everyday gear

Once the color existed in solution-dyed nylon, gear makers could offer it to anyone. By 2018, the maker of Cordura listed Ranger Green as a stock color for its solution-dyed fiber, alongside Coyote, Tan and Black. Today it turns up on packs, pouches and rifle slings from many makers, well outside military use.

On a woobie it lands close to where the poncho liner began, as a plain green with nothing printed over it. You can read the liner's story on What is a woobie?, compare it with the greens inside Woodland, or see Coyote Tan, the brown that came into military gear in the same years.