Desert Battle Dress Uniform

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These pants have the chocolate-chip camouflage pattern.

Desert Battle Dress Uniform[1] (abbreviated DBDU, often called Chocolate-Chip Camouflage, Cookie Dough Camouflage, or the Six-Color Desert Pattern) was the camouflage used by the United States military forces during the Persian Gulf War era in the early 1990s. The camouflage received its nickname because it resembles chocolate-chip cookie dough. It is made up of Light Tan, Tan, Brown, Dark Brown white and Black.

Although the chocolate-chip camouflage became well-known during the Persian Gulf War, it was developed in the 1960s. The Army, believing that it might become necessary to intervene into the Arab-Israeli conflicts, developed a test pattern using the deserts of southwestern United States as a model. When the hostilities in the Middle East wound down, the test pattern was mothballed. The six-color desert pattern would be used in limited numbers in the U.S.-Egyptian military exercise, Bright Star 82, but did not achieve full mass-production and popularity until the Persian Gulf War.

Following the Persian Gulf War, FORSCOM soldiers in the Sinai Desert found that the addition of the black and white rock patterns also increased the amount of contrast, preventing the camouflage from blending in effectively. This, in addition to the printing cost of pattern and the need for a camouflage that would be suitable for use in any desert, resulted in the six-color desert pattern being replaced with a newer three-color desert pattern (light tan, pale green, and brown) developed at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Center in 1990 and issued as the Desert Camouflage Uniform, though both patterns were briefly used together during the transition period, most notably during Operation Restore Hope and Operation Gothic Serpent (some US Army Rangers during the latter occasionally wore the newer 3-color DCU's along with kevlar helmets that still had the old 6-color pattern).

Iraqi Army soldiers wearing their variation of the chocolate-chip camouflage pattern.

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US Military used the three-color camouflage and also the desert pattern of the MARPAT design.

However, the chocolate-chip pattern is still in use. A uniform similar to the US Militarys' DBDU's have been issued to the Iraqi National Guard and other Iraqi security forces. South Korean forces have used, in limited numbers since 1993, a variant with brown replacing the black in the US design; this Korean design has also been tested in the United Arab Emirates. The National Guard of Oman wear a pattern mixing choc-chip with 'amoeba', while the National Guards of both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait use a grey variation on the choc-chip design. The Saudis also use a grey, black, and white 'urban' variation and the police wear a blue version of the same design; Palestinian police also use a blue choc-chip. The South African "Soldier 2000" pattern is similar to the US design, even being sometimes called 'South African choc-chip.'