According to the latest version of MIL-DTL-44436B which is used by DLA to guide industry, these are the official colors of Operational Camouflage Pattern:
Class 9 and 10, Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern (OCP). The cloth(s) shall be dyed to a ground shade either matching or approximating Cream 524 and then shall be overprinted with the camouflage pattern by roller or screen printing. When the ground shade is dyed to match Cream 524, the remaining colors shall be obtained by subsequent printing using six rollers or screens, as appropriate for the Tan 525, Pale Green 526, Olive 527, Dark Green 528, Brown 529 and Dark Brown 530 areas of the pattern. When the ground shade is dyed to approximate Cream 524 all seven colors of the camouflage pattern shall be obtained by subsequent printing using seven rollers or screens to match all seven colors.
Those colors sound kind of familiar. Oddly enough, the new variant of OCP (Scorpion W2) is being referred to as OCP Class 14 and not 9 & 10, which is all that is covered in the most recent version of the standard. As you can imagine, this is becoming rather confusing having two similar, yet distinct patterns using the same name.
This is what they are doing now.
After “Operation Enduring Freedom” add “Camouflage Pattern (OEF-CP)”
Delete “OCP” and replace with “Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP)”
Found it here at the very bottom.
https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=10f66e4e5c867d3eedf96972edc90dc5
Yes, November 1st, 2013. You read it here first. https://soldiersystems.net/2013/11/01/ocp-is-dead-long-live-ocp/
Does anyone know what color reference system is used here? Would be nice to have a Pantone Spec to support industry.
This is what is listed in the documents to base the colors off of, American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists.
http://www.aatcc.org/
Well that was one of them anyways.
Sorry, AATC is the body providing the structure/process for measuring the results of the printing in order to keep the finished fabric within the milspecs. It has no relevance to colors, which were devised by Crye and the Army. As with MARPAT and the 3 color DCU, there is no definitive Pantone (or RAL) reference – you gotta make your own, or know someone in the Crye/Army think-tank who knows.
I don’t know about the USMC, but the Army does in fact provide industry with standardized color references and chip books.
What will be the spec complementary color for hardware (webbing, zippers, hook&loop?) Still Tan 499 like Multicam?
The answer you seek is contained within the pages of SSD.
https://soldiersystems.net/2014/06/30/latest-info-us-army-transition-scorpion-camouflage-including-accessory-colors-schedules/
I’m not an adherent to Crye MC, but it looks more and more like Army is trying to re invent the wheel here – costing unnecessary expense and time delay in getting new camo fielded. When they could have already been down the road with MC.
More on that soon.
With similar pattern, same acronym, can senior Army leadership not see / forecast the confusion this is going to create, especially after transition date has expired;
1. Industry could have already been producing goods in MC to ramp up for service wide distribution = good for industry, good for Army.
2. The Abbot and Costello skit that will be repeated often btwn is a soldier in uniform wearing OCP or out of uniform wearing OCP…….. Extrapolate this to everything from hats to canteen covers, and don’t forget the mix and match, pants new OCP, Shirt new OCP, hat old OCP, how was I to know sarge, it was dark when I got dressed.
And what about items stockpiled for deployment, who knew our 3 day packs were old OCP, on the inventory sheet they were marked OCP………
3. Once the transition date has expired, there will be a witch hunt for old OCP and much debate of what is new OCP and what is old OCP, it will happen.
Then how many millions of dollars of old OCP will be destroyed and or end up on the government auction site for pennies on the dollar and in surplus stores…….
I don’t see how this is good for Army, or improves fighting ability or especially morale, this is a textbook example of how not to run a project.
WHOA WHOA WHOA
You are simply making too much sense and the wear out day on that was decades ago! Atleast!
Quit it!
Perhaps the ambiguity is intentional. Perhaps the the matching initials are by design… a means of punctuating the ambiguity. This means either a) they intend to allow OCP/OCP to be interchangeable throughout an as yet undefined period, or (and this is my favorite), b) maybe they are leaving it ambiguous because some things are not yet settled.
They do plan on a very long transition which will include over dyed UCP.
Go on….
Ok, picture this, general sitting in office in Pentagon receives phone call from the field reporting half his command has been taken out of action (this momentarily causes him to pause from sending 200 emails an hour to some lady friend in FL, which he hopes his Captain girlfriend doesn’t find out about, and really hopes his wife doesn’t find out about the two aforementioned ladies) he asks, was it the Jihadist? no Sir, comes the reply. Then it had to be the Russkies? No sir. It couldn’t be the Chinese? No sir. I knew it, it’s the British, they’ve just been BIDDING their time since The War of 1812 to strike, the Limey bastards!! (Subject of British causes him to daydream about wearing a really short Blackwatch tartan kilt with a really large sporran to show off his manly legs), he’s snapped out of daydream by reply of no sir.
He’s response is to shout really loud and ask who / what took out half his command??!! Long pause follows, soldier hesitantly says it was the order general put out on old OCP after transition date had expired no longer being allowed for wear under any circumstances, period! And half his command had to be sent home because their body armor outer vests were old OCP and they were out of uniform……….
Spell correction, BIDING instead of BIDDINg
Seriously guys, this isn’t me yanking everyone’s chain. I don’t know who you are Mitchell Fuller, but keep it up.
60% agreed, 40% happy to see some rigor and precision.
One reason Multicam has been so consistent has been that Crye is VERY on top of QC at the mills. If Crye doesn’t pass it, it’s ground up or burned. The “evolution” of Multicam’s palette over the years has been driven by Crye, not manufacturing variation. (some guy named Patrick who used to work at Triple Aught Design explained this to me when I asked why no mo’ Multicam from them).
That DLA is defining these parameters means that someone there has been paying attention. The mills that print Multicam already “get” the registration challenges of printing 8 colors (with multiple gradients) onto fabric. Color precision is the slippery variable going forward.
Also good to see this because whether or not Crye sues, they will probably “tune” their pattern to ensure compatibility with OCP so they can keep licensing fabric (and Texcel and Murdock webbing) and the civ manufacturers who make the gear we REALLY need can stay in the game whether or not Army “restricts” non-contract access to the fabric.
Or not. Eagerly awaiting the next dispatch from the editor…
Is it me or do the colors in Scorpion look a lot like the colors from the old M81 woodland just in a Mulitcam like pattern?
No.
Maybe on some super faded fabric, but even that is a stretch.
Hmm, must be because I thought that the fabric swatch above looked faded and I figured unfaded it would look like M81 woodland. So, I guess that the colors are Multicam-esque then?
Yes, very.
The stuff above is brand new from the mill.
There’s a pretty good side-by-side comparison here: https://soldiersystems.net/2014/08/05/ocp-side-side-photos-scorpion-w2-multicam/
Has this anything to do with the military industrial complex
I’d bet it’s more simply ego in the form of Not Invented Here Syndrome.
Remember, for the Phase IV trials, the Natick (I believe it was Natick’s) submission was removed because it was too similar to one of the other competitors… Methinks we’re seeing that removed submission now.
You say “military industrial complex” like it’s a bad thing.
Look at UCP someone made money
How so?
For those wondering about the “nightmare” scenario about soldiers wearing MC vs the new scorpion uniform when it becomes available, we’ll never see it. Why? Because a) the scorpion uniforms will come with different shoulder pockets and b) it wont be made out of (expensive) FR material, so Joe snuffy in his vintage 2010-2014 OEF uniform he got from RFI will be clearly busted out by the 1SG for being out of uniform.
SSD,
With this info that you provided, why couldn’t these become OCP’s bookends?
https://soldiersystems.net/2014/09/03/crye-precision-offering-multicam-arid-black-tropical-field-and-combat-uniforms/