Okay Okay...I hear you!
Lots of people hitting me on the tipline about the Brits' new cammo...Whoa! Caleb Crye is about to become a rich man, huh? Can't wait to see what his booth looks like at SHOT Show (hopefully he'll do a better job of talking to reporters this time since lots of Gov money is heading his way).
Anyway, BBC is reporting that the British Army has adopted a UK version of MultiCam MultiCam to replace its 40 y/o woodland Disruptive Pattern Material. That's freaking HUGE!
The new uniform looks as if it has the distinctive traits of Brit duds: the vertical pockets with buttons, large belt loops, tuck in styling. Seems that they built their own uniform out of a customized MultiCam material.
It's just amazing to me that the Brits did this -- and seemingly so suddenly. I wonder how this will affect the Army's camo wrangling? Is it possible to how two major allies with the same (or very similar) camo scheme? I know there are a lot of 3rd world armies with BDUs, but having US and UK troops operating side-by-side with nearly the same camo would be amazing. Maybe this will weigh the Army against adopting MultiCam for its new UCP.
And on that note, I spent three hours at PEO Soldier on Friday afternoon discuss a couple gear issues with officials there, including the latest on the Afghanistan camo experimentation. I'll roll out what I learned over the next couple days (so keep tuning in over the Christmas break) but I thought I'd post a video from CNN where my good friend Barbara Starr seems not to know what she's got.
Doing a package on Taliban arms and fighter smuggling, she never realized the troops she was filming (or if she knew, she didn't say anything) were from the 3rd of the 61st -- the unit which was sent the UCP-D uniforms. The irony here was she was at the briefing at the Pentagon with us when the Army announced the experiment with UCP-D and MultiCam. She waltzed in there late, demanded a few on camera questions for her package -- interrupting our good friend from Army Times Matt Cox, who delivered her a "I'm still getting my question clarified, thank you!" response.
Babs left in a huff, demanding from Army PAOs her own mini-briefing so the all-important CNN could get their big new break of the day.
After all those hystrionics, at least as far as I can tell, there's no notice from CNN that what they caught was the first known footage of Soldiers wearing a never before worn camo pattern in Afghanistan.
And it looks pretty darned good, I must say.
I'll have more about this issue in the coming days, including why you'll probably notice that the Joes don't have the UCP-D helmet covers on their lids (nor UCP-D chest rig).
(Gouge: PEO Soldier)
-- Christian
