We posted an excellent story today written by one of our contributors critiquing the Armys new combat uniform. Eric Coulson, who commands an engineer company doing some IED-busting in the sandbox, tackles the issue of the uniforms color scheme, construction and materials.
One thing he mentions is the under-the-radar popularity among some in the military of a new pattern called multicam. The Armys Natick Soldier Systems Center is looking at multicam for its defunct (sort of) Future Force/Land Warrior ensemble.
While the multicam looks good for a woodland - or even urban - environment, I wonder how it would work in the desert. The most popular desert pattern in Iraq is the Marine Corps desert MarPat scheme, which blends in well against the mud-brick construction of Iraqi buildings and can barely be seen through night vision goggles with a desert rock backdrop.
There are some photos out there on the net of operators wearing the multicam in Southwest scrubland, but thats with a lot of green around. Surely the folks at Natick are hard at work tweeking the multicam pattern for multi-environment use.
-- Christian
