![]() ![]() The US Army is not currently in a position to confirm the situation. Sources say that other contenders still in the running include Marine Corps’ desert and woodland patterns, and officials are considering creating and testing a digitised pattern based on the colours of MultiCam pattern. Crye issued a statement in reply stating that this figure was misrepresentative, adding that it had agreed to reduce its fees and offered a deal within 1% of the cost of UCP. In May 2013, Crye’s MultiCam emerged as the top contender for the general use pattern, but by May 2014 talks with the Army were reported to have broken down over the $24.8m royalty fee Crye was demanding. We have testimonials from soldiers in theatre close enough to the enemy to hear them saying they can’t see the American. He recently told Army Times: "The bottom line is the enemy can’t kill, hurt or injure who they can’t see. ![]() ![]() Mortlock, project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment, says the criteria for testing the patterns are "detection and blending". Having learned lessons from UCP in Afghanistan, one likely solution is that the Army will select a universal pattern for general use while offering commanders backdrop-specific designs for different theatres.Ĭol. The Army reports that, to date, the tests have revealed that the pattern itself only seems to be important at distances of up to 50m after this the colours become the main factor. Designs for specific environments are compared to more generic designs, and soldiers trained as spotters will try to pick out colleagues wearing uniforms made from the printed fabrics against different backgrounds, at various distances and in different lighting conditions. To ensure there is no repeat of the UCP fiasco, the Army is currently subjecting candidates to the biggest uniform camouflage test in history, involving thousands of soldiers at Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Polk, Louisiana and Yuma Testing Ground in Arizona. "Eleven years and a $5bn investment in UCP later, the US Army is back at the drawing board." Back to the drawing boardĮleven years and a $5bn investment in UCP later, the US Army is back at the drawing board in an attempt to settle on a family of camouflage designs that achieves what UCP set out to do originally – be a truly universal design that, in a small selection of colourways, will disguise the presence of soldiers in all situations. While it performed well alone, it was never directly compared against its competitors, adding heft to the argument of the detractors of its performance in Afghanistan, who are quick to point out the only other army to use a strikingly similar pixelated design is Kazakhstan. Towards the end of these trials, UCP, a modified version of the US Marine Corps’ Marine Pattern, was undergoing a rigorous series of laboratory and field tests at five different sites. Despite this effort, none of the patterns evaluated through this process was selected. ![]() The winner in daylight was Desert All Over Brush, with MultiCam performing well in woodland environments and Urban Track getting best results at night, despite doing poorly in all other tests. By phase four, the candidates were printed on the Future Force Warrior ensemble – as opposed to the current ACU - and evaluated from different angles, against different backgrounds and in different lighting conditions. The eleven candidates that made it through to phase two were production printed and tested separately in daytime and night-time conditions. In the first, trained army experts had to compare side-by-side patterns printed on paper for blending, brightness, contrast and detection. The tests were carried out over four phases. Between 20, the US Army Natick Center rigorously tested and compared four different colourways of four different patterns Desert All Over Brush, Woodland Track, Urban Track and MultiCam. While it is impossible to directly correlate deaths or injuries of soldiers to wearing camouflage, the readily-recognisable pixelated design of UCP was always going to be a controversial choice. ![]()
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