Up Close And Personal: US Army Infantry, Afghanistan 2011

To paraphrase Shakespeare:  MultiCam by any other name, is MultiCam just the same.

It seems that the US Army’s latest attempt to re-state the bleeding obvious is to call the MultiCam uniform and equipment ensemble being rolled out for troops in Afghanistan is the “Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern (OCP) Uniform”.  First it was, sensibly, referred to as as the “Afghanistan MultiCam Uniform (AMU)”, then the alphabet soup name of the “Operation Enduring Freedom Fire-Retardant Uniform (OEF FRACU)”.  Frankly, the first one was the best – this latest name would imply that a special camo pattern was developed especially for OEF (which isn’t the case), and its not even a fully appropriate as an abbreviation, technically it should really be “OEFCPU”. 

Whatever…. the really important things are the timeframe for roll-out, and the fact that the soldiers’ full equipment issue will be done in MultiCam (or whatever other names the Army comes up with for it).  Meanwhile enjoy the publicity shots from PEO-Soldier below:

And by the way, if you don’t need all the hard-core features, or can’t afford a pair, of the spanky new Danner Mountain Combat Boots (pictured above), you could always try its civilian cousin – Danner’s “Talus” hiking boot.