Sorry to hear about your experience. What year was your gear and what did you have ?
On a side note regarding the color red, I would encourage some research as this attribute with red is very common across every industry. Those jackets were actually made at the old ARC factory so its possible they did not have the aliens working that day
Here is some science facts behind it.
Dyes and pigments work by absorbing certain wavelengths of light and reflecting or transmitting the rest. When a dye molecule absorbs a photon, an electron is excited to a higher energy state. Most of the time (neglecting fluorescence), the molecule de-excites by giving off heat and returns to the ground state intact. However, because the excited state is a high energy state, it has the potential to undergo a chemical reaction, breaking a covalent bond or otherwise irreversibly reacting with another molecule. This changes the electronic structure of the molecule which changes its absorption properties: e.g. many dyes that absorb visible light have large systems of conjugated double bonds and if these are broken, the absorbance can shift to much shorter wavelengths. How likely this kind of destructive chemistry is depends on the nature of the dye. ( our new materials are custom made in Japan so they do perform better then the past material which came from Korea )
Even with cars, red paint can often degrade faster because it absorbs higher energy (shorter wavelength) light. The more energy that is available, the more likely it is that reactions will occur.
You guys start the season yet ?