October 14, 2013
This just in:
According to the J&A (Justification and Approval) published on Oct 11th, 2013 by the ACC (Army Contracting Command), a contract was given to Crye for OCP, which is more well known as Multicam. So at this point, we can expect to see UCP being phased out and replaced with Multicam in the coming years.
Crye’s Multicam is a very versatile platform that can work reasonably well in multiple environments and terrain. The choice to go with a universal pattern makes sense from a logistics and financial point of view, as having one unified pattern for all terrains means that only one kind of uniform needs to be purchased (by the taxpayers), and shipped to, every soldier. This saves money on having to buy multiple colors of the same uniform for each infantryman.
Arguably, the UCP pattern was a colossal failure, as the pattern didn’t seem to fit well in any terrain at any time of the year. OCP, as stated earlier, works marginally better in every terrain over UCP.
At this point, there is no DoD (Department of Defense) contracts being issued due to the government shutdown. I’m personally excited to see the where the army takes the OCP pattern, as it has also been rumored that they plan to use the pattern, and adopt a three pattern scheme in order to account for woodland, arid, and transitional terrain.
