Something slightly different – and frankly bizarre! – obscure US Military Patch graphics. I first tagged this set a while back (2008) but only just rediscovered whilst mining through the ever increasing stack of Sci-Fi-O-Rama resource bookmarks!
What we have here then are six samples or military shoulder/pocket patches taken from “I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World” (published Melville House Dec 2007) a compendium of rarely seen “Black Ops” Military Unit/Projects memorabilia researched and compiled by American Artist’s Trevor Paglen. What constitutes a Black Ops Project then? well basically it’s any classified US military research project veiled in secrecy that quietly guzzle funds from the federal budget. Examples of Black Ops which have trans-located into the public domain include the F-117 Stealth Fighter or the B2 Stealth Bomber and those projects that don’t and remain forever shrouded? well it’s a conspiracy theorists wet dream isn’t it…
I’ve always been a fan of embroidered sew on patches be they Military, Space, Movie or otherwise (having assembled small collection via ebay) anyway this set with it’s extremely weird mix of cartoon visuals, Sci-Fi, the Occult and sinister cryptic slogans pretty much blows any other patch art into oblivion…
Here’s the notes then for the chosen images:
Top: National Reconnaissance Office Dragon Path – This patch is one of Trevor Paglen’s absolute favourites, and it’s not hard to see why! The whole visual concept – the green dragon holding the world in its clutches, American flag wings, and its tail wrapped around a diamond – is extremely sinister, and screams “Imperialism/New World Order/Illuminati” well at least that’s my half-baked conjecture!. The actual source of the patch apparently has something to do with a classified Satellite (probably signals-intelligence) launched into a geosynchronous orbit in 2003…
2nd Top: This one’s definitely my favourite – wicked design – Minotaur is a still-classified program undertaken by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs division, the Skunk Works.
3rd Top:“We Own The Night” – This patch commemorates the August 17, 2000, launch of a “classified National Reconnaissance Office payload” atop a Titan IV rocket.
4th Top: The Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile was a classified cruise missile symbolized by the Tasmanian Devil. The acronym Tssam recalled the cartoon character.
5th Top: The classic ‘Grey’ alien with a B-2 bomber in it’s clutches, the slogan “To Serve Man” apparently a reference to a classic Twilight Zone episode… The 509th Bomb Wing flew B-2 stealth bomber test flights, and used to be based at Roswell, N.M., home of the notorious ‘Roswell Incident‘.
Bottom: This one with it’s glowing eyed green wizard creature remains something of an enigma, Trevor notes: The origins of this patch remain unknown. The red star is in Southwest, which is many secret units’ home, while military intelligence typically uses green vaults.
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For further reading and imagery check this New York Times article and interview with Trevor Paglin http://is.gd/eMcOz or visit Trevor’s home site: http://www.paglen.com/
Also you can buy a copy of “I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World” starting from via Amazon, here’s a link: http://is.gd/eMdbl
And finally for more Secretive Military patch design inspiration check out this site: http://www.u2sr71patches.co.uk/area51.htm
3rd one down is very very similar to a Bundeswehr slogan that I have stuck to one of my drum machines which says “auch nachts hellwach”, which means something along the same lines as ‘we own the night’ or ‘we come out at night’ and also features an image of an owl. Although this one is very cryptic and Moloch-ish (see map of Washington D.C.) and the German one doesn’t depict stealth bombers invading Africa!!!! More specifically, the planes seem to cross over at the border between Chad and Sudan/Ennedi Plateau/Darfur region!!?? I’d guess at there being some significance to the blacked-out aircraft and also the way the sun is rising, but I’m not totally on top of all this imagery in just one patch! Check it out for yourselves though…
I love the fact that the bottom slogan in the “To Serve Man” patch says, in classic Dog Latin, “Tastes Like Chicken”
Haha yeah I did read that Ray, I was going to update the post – that’s the thing about these patches, although the are kinda sinister they are actually laced with stereotype & irony – pretty funny if you ask me… what you think they’re getting at then with “Tastes like Chicken” ?
[...] I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black … [...]
[...] here’s a link to the prior [...]
Regarding the bottom patch, “Behind the Green Door” is actually a reference to a porn movie dating from the early 70′s, check it out: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068260/
[...] Tim Shorrock, author of the seminal book Spies for Hire, has described Lockheed Martin as “the largest defense contractor and private intelligence force in the world.” As far back as 2002, the company plunged into the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program that was former National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter’s pet project. A giant database to collect telephone numbers, credit cards, and reams of other personal data from U.S. citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the program was de-funded by Congress the following year, but concerns remain that the National Security Agency is now running a similar secret program. [...]
[...] Tim Shorrock, author of the seminal book Spies for Hire, has described Lockheed Martin as “the largest defense contractor and private intelligence force in the world.” As far back as 2002, the company plunged into the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program that was former National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter’s pet project. A giant database to collect telephone numbers, credit cards, and reams of other personal data from U.S. citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the program was de-funded by Congress the following year, but concerns remain that the National Security Agency is now running a similar secret program. [...]
[...] Tim Shorrock, author of the seminal book Spies for Hire, has described Lockheed Martin as “the largest defense contractor and private intelligence force in the world.” As far back as 2002, the company plunged into the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program that was former National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter’s pet project. A giant database to collect telephone numbers, credit cards, and reams of other personal data from U.S. citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the program was de-funded by Congress the following year, but concerns remain that the National Security Agency is now running a similar secret program. [...]
[...] Tim Shorrock, author of the seminal book Spies for Hire, has described Lockheed Martin as “the largest defense contractor and private intelligence force in the world.” As far back as 2002, the company plunged into the “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program that was former National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter’s pet project. A giant database to collect telephone numbers, credit cards, and reams of other personal data from U.S. citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the program was de-funded by Congress the following year, but concerns remain that the National Security Agency is now running a similar secret program. [...]
If you read the book, you find that “Behind The Green Door” phrase was coined well before the porno movie from the 1970s.