As reported last month by Kit Up!, the Army is close to making a call on mountain boots. After years of relying on a variety of commercial mountain boots, none were designed specifically for use in combat operations. On Monday, Natick’s contracting team awarded $8.6 Million for a GSA purchase to Danner for Mountain Combat Boots. Does this mean that the Army has made a decision in their quest for a Mountain Combat Boot?
Filling a niche below full leather or plastic shelled mountaineering boots but beefier than standard combat boots, they are intended for troops who find themselves scrambling in rocky terrain. Troops in Afghanistan have been trialling candidate boots from Danner, Belleville, and Wellco and the PEO-Soldier stated that they were close to making a decision.
Another clue pointing to the Danner selection may have also emerged. Although you can’t completely rely on this, photos released Monday of a Soldier clad in OCP (MultiCam) and the latest version of the IOTV also featured the Danner boot.
Photo PEO-Soldier
UPDATE: Although we queried PEO-Soldier on the subject they haven’t commented yet. Hopefully, we will see something on this soon. PEO-Soldier let us know that this purchase was solely to support Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI) requirements. They went on to inform us that they are still testing and evaluating the candidates. So, as we see it, the war continues to go on and troops still need boots. It’s just that RFI has chosen that those boots come from Danner and not the other candidate vendors. Interesting…
