Alright, it’s going to be a long post, but I’m doing this because I care and there are often misconceptions about this specific camouflage. There are many theories, such as it being issued only for one year, and the most extreme one is that it wanted to replace Kopassandha. But none of them are true.

Let me start with the “IFGABA” term. It was a program decreed by the Army High Command in 1967, requiring all infantry battalions to attend a two-month refresher training. By 1973, as all infantry had rotated through IFGABA training, existing raider battalions were updated to airborne status. During this timeline, there were only IFGABA and airborne statuses (Now, the camouflage ITS NOT issued during this IFGABA course).
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This program was later replaced by Yudha Wastu Pramuka in 1977, a 3-month advanced infantry course.
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The very next year (1978), General Mohammad Jusuf became a commander and reintroduced the Raider concept. This, of course, is when the real IFGABA camouflage was actually issued. The “vertical stripe” pattern was designed by Colonel M. Sanif (former commander of 17 Airborne Brigade) and issued to all qualified graduates of the Raider Course from 1980 to 1983. Many units, including the infantry, airborne, Kopasgat, Marines, and Brimob, were part of this program.

So the conclusion is, I prefer to call this camouflage the ’80s Raider camouflage instead of loreng IFGABA (infanteri gaya baru/new style infantry) camouflage.
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This camouflage was seen during The Indonesian invasion of East Timor (Operation Lotus / Seroja), with many color variations were available, but it was due to poor quality control and different manufacturers. There were both HBT and twill versions. The black stripes are often referred to as the Marines’ version.
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In my collection, I have items produced as late as 1984/1985 when the entire armed forces switched to British DPM camouflage.
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I hope this information is helpful and would appreciate it if you could share it with others. Pictures credit to Penjelajah and Facebook post. Article credit to pak Ken Conboy’s Elite Book 🙏🏼

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Update 29 December 2003:

My personal take on this camouflage is that I believe the “leaf” embedded into the pattern is inspired from Yugoslavia mountain camouflage, that we gifted from the free-fall instructors back in 1962.

Picture from yugoslavian.military.gear on Instagram.

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