US Army Afghan camo show-down

Well, it appears that the waiting, wondering and speclation is over.  Beginning next month, two battalions’ worth of uniforms will be evaluated in Afghanistan next month.

And what have the Army decided to test?  Well, Multicam is in the running – and so is a new version of UCP created by the PEO Soldier program at Natick.  So, it would seem that the Army just can’t/won’t admit that they got it wrong with UCP.  Instead, the boffins at Natick put on their thinking caps and came up with the pattern pictured below – “UCP-Delta”.

 Yup, that’s it.  All that collective brain-power, experience and technology and the best they could do was add 30% of Coyote Brown to the existing P.O.S. UCP pattern.  Looks more like “Coyote Ugly” to me.

Its also rather disappointing that the test is limited to just these two patterns; i.e., that Mirage Camo from Bulldog Equipment wasn’t included as well.  On the other hand, it might be that the Army can’t really be bothered about it and are making it easy for MultiCam to win.  In addition, it seems that the choice of this pattern may also be motivated by the fact that it blends well with existing field gear in UCP (see below).

And here’s a close-up of the material:

 

Well, I still say that either MultiCam or Mirage would be better.