In a statement received by SSD from PEO Soldier spokeswoman Debra Dawson this morning, the Army has announced that they have withdrawn the unrevealed, so-called ‘Natick’ or Government developed family of patterns from the Camouflage Improvement Effort.
“On Jan. 10th, the Army announced that families of camouflage patterns from one government team and four commercial vendors were selected to proceed into the next step of evaluations. As part of a cost savings strategy and as a result of initial assessments, the government submission is being removed from further consideration as a replacement to the universal camouflage pattern. This decision has been made in light of the similarity between elements of the government and one industry submission and the higher score of the industry submission during the initial evaluation. We are excited about the four vendor patterns we are going forward with. We anticipate experiencing very positive results in our field trials and more advanced computer evaluations. We will continue to work closely with our industry partners and our government team, especially in terms of research, development and evaluation. The Army conducts extensive testing to ensure we provide Soldiers with the very best clothing and equipment.”
Good on the Army for reducing redundancies and further focusing the effort. This leaves the four industry finalists:
ADS Inc as Prime, partnered with Guy Cramer
Brookwood Companies
Crye Precision
Kryptek
I can’t say I’m sad nor surprised. After all, these are the folks who decided that UCP was ideal.
I was getting ready to say the same thing Richard. LOL!
Hmmm, I am betting the ADS pattern was the similar one. I would wager that even if Crye comes out with the best pattern, which i bet they will, That ADS gets the contract.
“Hasta la vista baby”.
I’m with Adrian – I reckon the Natick pattern was a pixelated design that ended up looking too close to the ADS / Guy Cramer submissions. It was actually probably rather clever of Cramer and co. to submit a digital pixelated pattern that has a design geometry similar to current US military digital patterns – it’ll probably be easier to “sell” the brass on a pattern that maintains the current brand image.
Of course, that’s if they even go ahead and make the switch at all…
I’m starting to get really interested in seeing this Brookwood and Crye pattern. I’m assuming Crye used Multicam as a base and just added colors to get a better woodland and desert but I have no clue about this Brookwood group. Can’t wait to see some examples when that day comes.
I’m surprised Natick withdrew their pattern, I was hoping they’d use the Desert Brush All Over pattern that did so well in the initial UCP testing but I guess they used something similar to either Crye or ADS. Either way I have a bad feeling nothing will come out of all of this. Just another huge waster of taxpayer dollar to state the obvious, UCP sucks and there are lots of better options.
Jeff look at this weeks Army Times. There is a picture of the Brookwood submissions but still no Crye. It states in the article that Crye did not respond to repeated requests for a sample.
If you watch the little briefing video on the military times website it briefly shows three patterns which I assume are the three Brookwood patterns. They look like watercolor, but could be effective.
I’ve been following this story, because of my interest in CAMO in general even though it won’t affect my current uniform (I’m Navy). What I did find EXTREMELY surprising is that if you click on the links in the article to fbo.gov you will see that Brookwood’s submission is costing taxpayers $83,000, CRYE and ADS received ~$683,000 for this portion of the contract, but Kryptek got ~$6 MILLION dollars! For what?! Seriously! $6 Million dollars? Unless I’m reading it wrong…we (taxpayers) got fleeced on that one…
I written about this issue at ad nauseum. None of those companies have not received those amounts yet, will only receive the full amount if they are the final selection. They will never receive another dime from the government, for the US taxpayer this is a serious bargain. To commercial license a camouflage pattern for a force the size of the US Army would cost in the hundred of million of dollars.
Ah…thanks for the info…had not seen those articles previously.
Brookwood and Crye are huge companies. Kryptek is literally four guys working out of a cabin in Fairbanks, AK.
So is ADS
I’d like a higher res image of the Kryptek patterns.
I’ve heard from a very well-placed source that the Crye submissions are “woodland” and “desert” re-colorations of MultiCam.
Does that mean Crye’s transitional pattern is most likely multicam? If this is the case, how does that affect the baseline patterns, which include multicam? Is the baseline now just AOR 1 & 2?
Maybe MC, backed off in saturation and with more pronounced khaki/brown like the ADS Transitional?
No, it is not, the patterns had to be all new.
And we should believe you.. Why?
I kid. Interesting. Thanks for the scoop.
Good question Robert. I assume it means that standard / commercially-available MultiCam is also in the running as their Transitional and OICE pattern…
What a great solution that would be, so simple and cheap! And exactly that makes me think it’s not going to happen…
Looks like the Army has finally wizened up after the UCP boondoggle that cost soooooooo much wasted time and money to develop a substandard camouflage pattern. Maybe this time they can FINALLY get it right and take care of the Soldier instead of worrying about their OER’s & what the Armed Services Committee thinks about which pattern looks more “professional”.
I reckons I feel knowledgable, even thoughs I have no basis for my opinions.
Brookwood’s family of patterns clearly do not have the same geometry. If Brookwood wins, the other 3 vendors should protest because they felt the RFP constrained them to a single geometry (which, by the way, is ludicrous to have the same geometry in every environment).
If any of the three submissions with similar geometry win, then the
others should protest because they are competing against baselines
that do not have similar geometry (baselines are MultiCam, Marpats, BDU, etc).