Word is trickling out to the troops via NCO Channels (imagine that) that the Army will allow Soldiers to wear ACUs in UCP or OCP (legacy MultiCam as well as newfangled hotness Scorpion W2) beginning 1 July. So far nothing official in message traffic has been released and neither wearout dates for UCP nor mandatory possession dates for OCP have been established.
Have any of you heard this?
Last year, PEO Soldier’s ‘Camo Czar’ COL Robert Mortlock famously commented to the Army Times that you cannot patent colors, when referring to the combat proven coloration of Crye Precision’s MultiCam pattern. Not long after, the Army went on to appropriate Crye’s color palette for their new Operational Camouflage Pattern. According to sources close to the program, it wouldn’t matter to COL Mortlock even if you could patent colors, because as it turns out, he is colorblind.
Rumor has it, COL Mortlock will be receiving his annual eye exam this afternoon. Hopefully nothing else will turn up.
Naturally, when you get that many industry pros together, they are going to talk programs. Of course, there was lots of talk regarding CSASS and Modular Handgun but the sod goods folks wanted to talk about the US Army’s impending Operational Camouflage Pattern transition.
Announced last year, the US Army plans to begin issuing the new pattern beginning early Summer 2015 to replace the Universal Camouflage Pattern initially fielded in 2004. Operational Camouflage Pattern or OCP arose from the ashes of the uncompleted Camouflage Improvement Effort which began in 2011. A developmental camouflage pattern called Scorpion W2 was selected by the Army for fielding as OCP after the Army unilaterally broke off talks with Crye Precision who had created a pattern commercially called MultiCam. MultiCam has been in use with USSOCOM for many years and was adopted for use by the Army in 2010 strictly for use in Afghanistan also under the nomenclature of OCP. The US Air Force also used MultiCam OCP for their deployed forces and will continue to use the new OCP variant as well.
A couple of items stuck out in my OCP conversations with industry.
First, OCP NYCO fabric is all that is being printed and it has only been delivered so far to NIB/NISH and Federal Prison Industries for assembly into ACUs. No commercial vendors have received fabric yet to manufacture ACUs for the Army.
Second, there is currently no plan to release fabric to companies for commercial sale. This means no commercial OCP ACUs like those offered in other patterns by companies like Propper and Tru-Spec. It’s a pretty significant issue that will affect military outfitters which service Army customers outside of Army posts as well as online.
While no one has been printing OCP Cordura, this issue will most likely affect that fabric as well, meaning no commercial OCP (Scorpion W2) equipment. This falls in line with what I expected early on with OCP (Scorpion W2) being restricted to US government use and MultiCam being used for commercial OCP sales. Remember what we told you early on; OCP is OCP.
However, these are pretty cautious actions by an Army that claims to “have appropriate rights to use OCP.” They are certainly tiptoeing through the tulips.
From Chief of Staff of the Army GEN Ray Odierno’s lips to our ears during a Virtual Town Hall earlier this week, we learn that the Army is adopting MultiCam. That’s not really true, but it’s gold like this that undermines the Army’s assertion that the Operational Camouflage Pattern (developed as Scorpion W2) Army recently adopted by the Army is distinctly different from the MultiCam it replaces. As you know, the MultiCam camouflage pattern was developed for commercial use by Crye Precision and adopted initially by USSOCOM for worldwide use and then later by the Army and US Air Force specifically for wear in Afghanistan starting in 2010. The CSA was right about that part.
Unfortunately, licensing negotiations between the Army and Crye Precision to field MultiCam to the entire force stalled last Spring due to Army inaction, resulting instead in the Army choosing to field a home brewed variant of the Scorpion pattern developed by Crye Associates in the early 2000s. This pattern, referred to as Operational Camouflage Pattern features coloration and shapes similar to MultiCam although the Army has asserted that it is a distinctly different pattern. Below we see the two patterns together with the MultiCam atop Scorpion W2.
Remember, in Army parlance OCP is OCP, regardless if it is the MultiCam variant or the new Scorpion W2 version. MultiCam will continued to be fielded by the Army under the name OCP. However, MultiCam is a brand name of a commercially available pattern, that the US Army did not select as its new camouflage. Mistake or not, the Army should not be referring to OCP as MultiCam. Otherwise, they are misleading Soldiers and applying the proven effectiveness of MultiCam to the as-yet-unproven Scorpion W2. If GEN Odierno’s comments were in fact a mistake, then it shows that there’s really no difference between the two and calls into question the Army’s actions to field a pattern without paying for it.
Earlier this week, the US Army released photos of several accessories for wear with the new Operational Camouflage Pattern variant of the Army Combat Uniform. Rather than the Desert Tan and Foliage Green that accompany Universal Camouflage Pattern, the Army will accessorize OCP with Tan 499 and Coyote 498.
These new items will be introduced along with the roll out of the new OCP ACU with improved features in Summer 2015. While the Army has not yet established mandatory possession dates for OCP or wearout dates for the currently issued UCP gear, the supply chain has been told to expect the use of UCP to end in 2018.
Due to reader interest, we’ve posted the G1 memorandum authorizing the wear of OCP in Garrison for members of the 75th Ranger Regiment. Please note, it also authorizes the wear of combat clothing.
At the recent DoD footwear meeting Army and DLA informed the companies that supply footwear about their intent to change the boot color from the current desert tan to Coyote which will work better with the new Operational Camouflage Pattern.
Contracts for issue boots are being modified and you should start seeing these available through Clothing Sales in May to coincide with OCP ACU availability. A wearout date for the current tan color has not been formally announced but is expected to be o/a 30 September, 2018.
Tactical Distributors, that’s who. Check out their MultiCam category.
www.tacticaldistributors.com/multicam
