United States Army has chosen new camouflage pattern Scorpion for its combat uniform 2805141

a

Defence & Security News - United States

 
 
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 10:02 AM
 
United States Army has chosen new camouflage pattern Scorpion for its combat uniform.
The United States Army has chosen the new camouflage pattern for its combat uniform, according to news reports. The service has not officially announced its decision, but anonymous Army officials told Military.com and Army Times that the Scorpion pattern has been selected to replace the current Universal Camouflage Pattern. (Source Stars and Stripes)
     
The United States Army has chosen the new camouflage pattern for its combat uniform, according to news reports. The service has not officially announced its decision, but anonymous Army officials told Military.com and Army Times that the Scorpion pattern has been selected to replace the current Universal Camouflage Pattern. (Source Stars and Stripes)
New camouflage pattern Scorpion
     

The service has not officially announced its decision, but anonymous Army officials told Military.com and Army Times that the Scorpion pattern has been selected to replace the current Universal Camouflage Pattern.

According to Military.com, Sgt. Maj. of the Army Raymond Chandler III has been briefing senior sergeants major throughout the Army about the new pattern for the Army Combat Uniform.

It is unclear when the Army will officially announce its decision or when soldiers will begin wearing the new uniform design.

For years, the Army had been reviewing different options for replacing the UCP. The service was reportedly planning on announcing its decision last year, but a provision in the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act dictated that the services could not field new service-specific camouflage uniforms. Lawmakers are requiring all the services to adopt and field similar combat uniforms by October 2018, although the mandate does not apply to special forces.

In March, Col. Robert F. Mortlock, project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment, said that the service had completed “the most extensive uniform camouflage testing in history,” which involved thousands of soldiers, including those deployed in Afghanistan.

“We have testimonials from soldiers in theater close enough to the enemy to hear them saying they can’t see the American [when they’re wearing the new camouflage patterns]. That’s powerful. That’s a combat multiplier,” according to Mortlock.

The Army is looking to field a new family of camouflage patterns tailored to unique environments, including separate patterns designed for arid, transitional semi-wooded, or heavily wooded terrain.

     
The United States Army has chosen the new camouflage pattern for its combat uniform, according to news reports. The service has not officially announced its decision, but anonymous Army officials told Military.com and Army Times that the Scorpion pattern has been selected to replace the current Universal Camouflage Pattern. (Source Stars and Stripes)
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan with Multicam combat uniform.
     

The decision to field and develop an alternative camouflage for uniforms came out of the realization that its current UCP did not meet all of the concealment needs for Afghanistan’s multiple regions, according to the Army. The service hopes that the environment-specific patterns will be superior to the UCP, which is intended to provide concealment in all of those environments.

Mortlock laid out how the new uniform was developed. During testing, soldiers wearing the different prototype patterns conducted movements at a variety of distances amid different lighting and background. Other soldiers were timed as they tried to spot the camouflaged troops.

Tests showed that from 25 yards to 50 yards, the camouflage pattern is critical for blending into the environment. At greater distances, the pattern itself is less important than the general colors of the camouflage, according to Mortlock.

Soldiers who tested the MultiCam in Afghanistan — the pattern which is reportedly similar to the Scorpion design — gave the uniform high marks, according to the Army. It is unclear how well the Scorpion compared with the MultiCam. According to Military.com, Army officials wanted to buy the MultiCam design from Crye Precision, but the contractor wanted more money than the service was willing to pay.

Mortlock emphasized that the uniform won’t be completely different than the current one.