Department of Defense (War) 2026 MUTCD Supplement (for CONUS and CONUS+)

[ElishaGOtis]

https://api.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/2026/04/20/a875953d/dow-supplement-to-the-mutcd-manual-on-uniform-traffic-control-devices-2026.pdf

This is the little-known and little-used Department of Defense (War) supplement to the 11th Edition MUTCD. It has some interesting signs you can see off of this installations, such as gate closed and whatnot. Probably the most important thing to note is the depreciation of the old non-compliant brown directional signs seen on some installations in favor of the green directional signs in the MUTCD.

By CONUS+, I mean continental USA plus Alaska, Hawaii, and US Territories. This does not include any overseas US installations where the signs differ from the MUTCD, such as the UK, Korea, and Japan.

[kphoger]

the depreciation of the old non-compliant brown directional signs

How much were they worth in previous editions? 

[ElishaGOtis]

the depreciation of the old non-compliant brown directional signs

How much were they worth in previous editions? 

little-known and little-used

^^ Probably worth that much  

[epzik8]

I love how the Chicane sign is just the curves ahead sign from civilian highways

[Max Rockatansky]

Seems appropriately bare bones and lines up with what I see on multiple installations.  Public Works departments often find weird signage that doesn't line up with any MUTCD.  The amount of non-reflective signs I've found is surprisingly high. 

[Scott5114]

It's kind of hilarious how bad these are.

[The_Ginger]

It's kind of hilarious how bad these are.

I think there's some Arial (or equivalent) signage in there.

[Bobby5280]

Signage on military posts/bases is all over the place in terms of standards.

Traffic control signage (stop signs, yield signs, traffic signals, etc.) mirrors that of what you see in civilian locations (for the most part).

All the other stuff seems improvised from one military installation to the next. That covers everything from the signs labeling the main gate down to name plate signage on officer or enlisted homes. My workplace makes most of the signage on Fort Sill. We do a decent amount of work at Altus Air Force Base, but far more aboard Fort Sill. Go to a different Army post and the signage will look different.

I'm not surprised to see Arial creep into a military-related MUTCD document. I think some of the material is being put together using PowerPoint rather than a proper vector graphics application. We all know how Arial is a mainstay of MS Office. A lot of crappy/lazy sign designers use Arial all the time because it's often a default font in applications like CorelDRAW. And it's near the top of the font menu. Arial just isn't very useful as a sign design typeface. There's only so many styles available, even with the newer Arial Nova. I can do a hell of a lot more using a variable font that has width and weight axes.

For residential signs on Fort Sill, which feature only the last name of officer or enlisted personnel, we've been using styles of either Helvetica Neue or Helvetica Now Variable. The lettering is reflective white vinyl on a metal panel painted a specific brown color. Some of the workplace exterior signs will have metal panels listing a couple or so names of the people in charge. The lettering on those signs is set in Heading Now Variable. Same brown/white color scheme. Commanding officers on the post get more fancy red colored signs, with their names set using Trajan Pro and the rank underneath in Gotham Medium.

One of the things that drives me nuts is all the different crests. I swear, some of the newest ones look like they were churned out using an AI bot. We get stuck having to print them as-is rather than waste a bunch of time trying to clean them up and/or vectorize them.