16th-17th centuries
> Practical and impressive armor and gear.
> Tasteful ornamentation.
> Varied materials, from absolutel /k/ino buff leather coats, to steel cuirasses, to guns inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl.
> "War is where men win glory!"

Modern times
> Everything looks like shit.
> Everything's in multicam or some other tone that's some variant of "shit," "dried out foliage," or both. Nothing else is allowed.
> Everything's made of nylon or covered in nylon. Nothing else is allowed.
> Things are so homogeneous that soldiers have to wear neon bands of electrical tape for IFF purposes.
> "Muh function over form!" Shoddy gear made by 70IQ prison labor.
> "War is where men get blown up on camera by drones running Palantir AI and social credit monitoring software!"
How did things go so terribly wrong? It's some combination of NATO, WWII, and the American and Communist disdain of Old European warrior aesthetics. (One of the rare things they both share.)

>>64061648 (OP)
>How did things go so terribly wrong?

>>64061648 (OP)
War isn’t about fashion, it’s about making the other guy die for his country

>>64061648 (OP)
Are you just retarded OP?

>>64061652
I mean, that's part of it, but even back in those days armies tried to give their men gear that looked distinctive and reflected national character.
Things are 100000x worse today. There's no imagination, no verve, no sense of aesthetics at all.

>>64061663
Yes, everybody KNOWS that disposable slop-colored nylon that makes you look like a sack of shit is the ultimate meta.

>>64061648 (OP)
It's about morale.
>How did things go so terribly wrong?
Artillery. It removed the resolution of combat away from the combatants themselves into the concentration of fires away from the frontlines, where individual soldiers could see their opponents.

Soldiers used to benefit from portraying themselves ostentatiously, as their outfit would signal to the opposition that they were fighting against superior troops, thus destroying their morale, making them aware of the fact that they have no hope of victory. The more a unit focuses on being a "shock troop" the more ostentatious their uniform would be.
The average soldier would certainly despair at the sight of a noble, or a famous mercenary, or some other shock troop like a berserker or ulfhednar, who would be trained to a vastly superior degree, all the while also having a far more fatalist attitude compared to the common soldier. Thus, the portrayal of their status as a warrior was significantly important for the resolution of any tactical scenario.

>>64061678
The easier I can see you, the easier I can kill you. People with drip got dropped

>>64061691
With IR, thermals, NVG, etc. etc., that is almost a COMPLETE non-factor these days.
You'd unironically be better off with a 3mm-thick 17th century buff leather coat than nylon multicam slop, lol.

>>64061705
>combat doesn't happen outside of night hours
lol, retard

>>64061709
> drones and artillery spotters don't use IR/Thermals during daytime
lmao

>>64061717
>drones and artillery spotters
You're arguing against yourself, retard.
Anon said:
>The easier I can see you, the easier I can kill you.
which applies to ALL soldiers, not just drones and artillery spotters.

Are you even human? There's no real ability to recognize arguments or logic in your posts; you act like an LLM.

>>64061648 (OP)
WWI, of course. Even the US was rocking some petty neat armor designs before it put the kabosh on that.

The aristocratic and masculine warrior spirit of Europe died in WW1.

There is no reason why uniforms can't look good outside of combat. We just live in soulless times of uglyness and gayness

>>64061779
>There is no reason why uniforms can't look good outside of combat.
Proper combat uniforms are loose-fitting and even relatively ugly because of it. You can't have the proper dress uniform fit while still being fit for combat.
>No inspection ready unit has ever passed combat.

>>64061648 (OP)
State-issued equipment is, and has always been, made in large identical batches by the lowest bidder. 17th-century gear was so bland that armies needed colored sashes and battle cries-of-the-day just so you could tell friend from foe in a melee. The reason uniforms got brighter and more distinctive as time went on was because dyed cloth got cheaper and the ratio of pikes to muskets slowly decreased from around 5:1 to zero-infinity and battlefield visibility suffered as a result, meaning a general needed help telling which of his units were which.
Do you know why most infantry in the 18th-century wore white pants when the roads were unpaved mud? It was less expensive to issue every soldier with a bag of chalk dust than it was to dye wool and as long as the jackets were distinctive you could cheap out on the other 2/3rds of the uniform. If you were Austria, and realized everyone else had dyed coats, you could cheap out on that too and only dye the facings. If the C^2 of the era hadn't been based on blurry spyglasses (or asking a subaltern what they could see with their non-middle aged eyes) every army would have made the entire uniform out of bleached wool and battles would have been fought between two masses of off-white.
And do you know why most armies to this day have blue uniforms? In the 17th- and 18th-centuries blue was usually the cheapest dark dye available, which meant it was such a common color for uniforms that it still has martial associations centuries later. Buttons were shiny because brass was cheap and easy to cast. Leather was used because it was strong and durable, and it was kept buffed because it lasted longer that way.

Any A-E-S-T-H-E-T-I-C to be found was incidental.

>>64061678
>but even back in those days armies tried to give their men gear that looked distinctive and reflected national character.
Sure. At the start of the war. Before they had experiance with the large scale application of modern weaponry in an industrial war of attrition. Uniforms got real drab, utilitarian and easy to mass produce after that.

>>64061648 (OP)
>old good new bad
Could you be any more of a walking talking cliche
>>64061705
Is that a Turk soldier

>>64061764
>VGH warfare lost its SOVL as soon as we got rid of the practice of letting posh twats with no military/combat experience buy their ranks and cause hundreds of deaths with their ineptitude

>>64061648 (OP)
>weird post-production/AI (getting harder to tell now) enhanced art/photo
vs
>ill-fitting EVERYTHING on skinny teenager trying his hardest to look hard


Form follows function, and if you function great you looks great.

>>64063211
Pic unrelated

>>64061705
A thermal sight is still vision, retard. It's just that now camouflage has to extend beyond the portion of the spectrum the human eye can detect.
The US only stopped starching uniforms because night vision became a thing and it made you glow extra bright in the dark. The side effect was our uniforms stopped having such nice sharp creases, but I'm sure you think that's more important than you know, not dying.

>>64061648 (OP)
> Practical and impressive armor and gear.
> Tasteful ornamentation.
> Varied materials, from absolutel /k/ino buff leather coats, to steel cuirasses, to guns inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl.
Thats the bespoke richfag stuff that survives, specifically because its nice so people took care of it. Actual mass issued munitions armor and weapons looked like shit, and very little remains because it was melted down into other things. Actual survivorship bias.
> "War is where men win glory!"
The original motard shit.

>>64063211
lmaooooo at that pic. Are you attempting to disprove the point you're trying to make?
> 1. kino ninja-viking, gleaming helmet, shining chain mail, beautifully adorned shield, sword at the ready. This isn't peak, but it's damn good. (Peak was 15th-17th centuries.)
> 2. Retarded looking faggot who can't even keep his magazines in place, or his straps clean, for a goddamn photoshoot. Looks sloppy, narrow-shouldered, and passive/submissive.
> 3. The beginning of the age of decline. Peasant-tier clothing, pot metal helmet, cheap SMG. Broad shoulders and a warrior's bearing, though.

>>64063790
Total cope.
What you're saying is true of, say, the 14th century and perhaps the 15th. By the 16th, armor was available. The guys in the pic are from the early 17th! Their leather buffcoats literally cost more than their breastplates; iron was inexpensive.
The armory in Graz has thousands of helmets, breastplates, inlaid guns, etc. from just the period in question. And that's just one place. There are tons and tons of such pieces.

>>64063211
Left is from an Osprey book on the 30 Years War. Picrel another one for you. Cuirassiers. The guy on the right has style -- never before had soldiers looked simultaneously so comfy and so dangerous.
Right is literally an official US Army promotional photograph! You've gotta feel sorry for the guy. . .

Croatian military then.
Croatian military now.

You may not like it but everything will converge to fur suits.

>>64063757
the future is dressing like giant chiken to avoid termals and UGs

>>64063908
Wait until you see how nice UCP will look in the illustrations from a mid-25th-century mass market picture book.

>>64064420
Pirates then
Pirates now

>>64064765
They're gonna be looking for army guys

>>64065408
If you were to give the guy on the right period-appropriate weapons I bet he wouldn't clash too badly with your average 18th century pirate crew.

>>64063187
>muh loioins led boi muh lambies
Retarded myth

>>64061705
I guess modern armor doesn't exist. Like seriously why make this thread? The answer to all your dumb fucking questions is soldiers don't want to die. Do you?

>>64065886
The whole point is that modern armor looks like dogshit.
> soldiers don't want to die
Soldiers have never wanted to die. But, in the past, there was a certain glory-seeking martial tradition, an aesthetic culture. Today it's sad-sacks in dirt-colored nylon pajamas.
If you look like a joke, then you feel like a joke, and you become a joke. The army would unironically be improved if it invested in soldier aesthetics.

>>64065948
Yes nigger.
The reason being that 99% of modern soldiers are from the corpo-serf poorfag class the equivalent of old peasent armies. That is why they dress in drab colors, have zero pride in the military service and are in it for some socialist benefits not for the glory or the lifestyle.
Most of medieval and nearly-modern soldiers were nobles from the warrior class, even the most basic bitch man at arms was the 7th son of some impoverished old warrior bloodline,hell even the longbowmen were the equivalent of modern upper middle class small landowners.

So what changed? Jews, kikes, small-hats, the hook nosed merchants if you would.
After ww2 when Hitler lost all the western countries were restructured as societies where the ruling class is made of wealthy merchant clans not warrior bloodlines to accommodate the jew parasytes that ruled from the shadows.
You couldn't have that with a bellatores ruling class because Jews can't fight for shit and wouldn't do it elbow to elbow with goyim.

Tldr it's the Jews unironically.

This is some actual larpy mental illness by a dude who has never fought a day in his life

>>64066124
>even the longbowmen
In fairness the longbowmen were the irreplaceable elite warriors of their time, in many respects

>>64066136
Nigga just look at the picture in OP and try saying that again with a straight face. There used to be glory and virtue in military attire. Now our soldiers are dressed in ill-fitting pajamas stitched together by prison labor.

>>64061648 (OP)
UUUHHHHH SOLDIERS DONT LOOK LIKE COOL PEOPLE I WISH I WAS LIKE >>>:((((

>>64066905
>no argument

>>64066932
Much like your posts, junior.

>>64065805
No you just know absolutely nothing about the death toll and how aristocrats were problematic at best and despicable at worst

>>64065799
AKs and PKMs are as period appropriate as it gets for criminals

>boo its bad that amelican soldiers have so much armor!
>SPECIFICALLY amelicans

>>64066993
Even the Taliban who previously fought a long, drawn-out war in basically 19th-century uniforms switched out to American gear the moment they had the chance.

>>64066153
They lost the only war you know they fought in. And England cared so little about them, when they were destroyed as a meaningful force it spent no effort to replace them.

>>64066156
Being mentally ill isn't something to share have some personal pride and keep your problems to yourself.

>>64066124
Why not just stay on /pol/ you schizo.