Imagine the JavaScript cool kid mindset but with guns.

A more terrifying sentence than this has rarely been written.

.... the USans will also come back in 20 years to make a film about how invading your country and blowing you into a pink mist in front of your parents made their solders feel sad.

In fact, it's not just their own camouflage pattern, the ABU actually had a distinctive blouse and pants that are different from the BDU that came before, or the ACU that the Army had adopted. Then they took the sage-green fleece from ECWCS Gen III (what the Army was wearing), and added the APECS Goretex parka that the Marine Corps was wearing, only in the ABU tiger-stripe rather than MARPAT.

Most of the actual battlefield airmen (i.e. the people who might reasonably expect to find themselves in combat conditions where camouflage could help like combat controller, TACP, PJ) didn't wear it anyway.

As pointed out elsewhere, this is very largely about esprit-de-corps in the context of a military organization, even if your job is actually avionics maintenance or personnel.

It does seem like a huge waste for all the services to have their own completely distinctive utility uniforms though - the pendulum is swinging back the other way now with the Army, Air Force and Space Force all back in the redesigned ACU/OCP with stitching color (black/spice-brown/blue) as the service-distinctive element.

Then again, maybe those old styles only looked good when they were made with nice materials, like wool and heavy waxed canvas, and would look bad with cheap modern synthetics.

With regards to looking good, I don't think it's necessarily that the look good with appropriate materials, but more that they look good only when they are properly starched and the like to maintain crisp lines.

This seems good in some situations and very bad in others?

I think you'll find they're pretty appealing to a lot of the people who want to be in the military.

Simple, effective, dare I say elegant.

Not everything the military does is about effectiveness. Sometimes senior NCOs want the enlisted to "look military", not just be effective.

Here's another example: why is the military PT (physical training) test varied by sex and age? If it was only about combat effectiveness, presumably there'd be 1 set of values that determine if someone had sufficient fitness relative to the rigors of combat (or whatever their job requires).

This makes variations by age and sex concessions to that goal, rather than design elements.

Meanwhile the Army would sometimes retain people incapable of passing the old age and gender standard. As an extreme example people with missing limbs could be retained.

The reality? Some politician or admiral wanted to leave their mark.

ftfy