Multicam wars
The Army Times reports that Multicam patterns may disappear, according to Crye Precision, the folks who own the pattern. They released a statement that they tried to help the Army save money by selling at prices reduced to less than 1% over cost and the Army rejected the offer;
Army officials have said, on condition of anonymity, that negotiations with Crye broke down over cost. Military.com has reported that Army officials did not want to pay Crye $24.8 million in royalties to use MultiCam, citing an unnamed source.
The company said that under pressure from the Army, it had reluctantly provided a valuation to the service, along with a discounted price. It claims the figure had been misused to represent the company as unwilling to negotiate with the Army as the Army seeks to find cost savings.
So, the Army is spending that 24.8 million bucks looking for a new pattern. Is that how you run your personal finances? I don’t.
Slightly off-topic; I recommend that Crye move out of New York because between the New York City mayor and the State’s legacy governor, I see them outlawing camouflage because it looks so scary.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Big Army
Never fails to amaze me. When I was younger I would be surprised and get all upset but at this age, meh. It is business as usual at the Pentagon. Well, except that their business as usual is at the expense of taxpayers.
Typical of the government in general and the Pentagon in particular. True to the old government saying, “If it ain’t broke, fix it till it is.” The Army was already getting the best deal available and will now screw the troops out of a good camo uniform.
More like “Find what works and keep fixing it until it’s FUBAR!”.
And how much did the Army waste on UCP and testing to find a replacement?
The Army wasted in the neighborhood of $5 billion plus. I’m old enough to have worn the OD green jungles back in the day. I’m still a fan of that uniform for its fit, comfort, and all around utility. Once it faded a bit I thought it hid you fairly well.
Amen to that…. basically almost any dull color accented with a few days of local dirt is pretty effective.
The old Woodland Camo did fine as well, and was excellent at blending POL/dirt/blood stains into the basic camo pattern. Worked great for mechanical maintenance and in the field.
Errr… I guess that would be the BDU’s. I’m having a senior day…. What did I have for breakfast?
Shit, I worked on the Crusader self propelled howitzer system for two years until it was cancelled. God knows how much was pissed away with nothing to show for it. And they had a damned working prototype in Yuma capable of firing hard coded missions. Nah, too big, don’t need it, blah blah blah.
I’ve never been a big fan of multi-cam. It just doesn’t do anything for me from an aesthetic view point, though I’ll admit it is more effective than the ACU pattern we are wearing now. That said, there’s a lot of other stuff on the market that is just as effective as multi-cam and doesn’t make it look like a babies diaper exploded all over you.
I’m a big fan of ATACS, US Palm, ADS (Ghostex K), and even the old skool BDU/DCU stuff. So yeah, if they are going to spend the money anyway, I won’t be sad if they spend it on something other than multi-cam. As long as they ditch the ACU/UCP.
I hate the ACUs. Thankfully in 75 days I will take them off and never wear them again (not that I’m counting). Back when we had BDUs I used to say that I would keep them after I got out to go hunting in. I can’t do that now unless I plan on going hunting in a gravel pit.
You know that whole aesthetic view point is how the army ended up with UCP. Who cares if it looks like a babies diaper if it works.
It works.
Why would the Army keep it?
The up side is I should be able to find multi-cam at the surplus store soon.
Kept one set of ACU’s fir posterity.
No idea what to do with the rest.
On another not this Kindle is hating on the one finger typing.
Think of all the money the posers will have to invest in new uniforms.
Money doesn’t seem to faze them!
All the money the posers will have to spend — exactly what I was going to say.
Maybe the Army will go back to black boots, too? Those were pretty sharp.
I wore the ancient “pickle suit”, which I hated due to the lack of pockets and generally too-tailored fit, until we were issued the awesome BDU.
In all honesty, I always preferred the olive green jungle fatigues. They were cut right, had sufficient pockets, and I thought that the olive color was more cost effective than the more complicated camo pattern.
My observation is that every camo pattern merely degenerates into a dark blob when viewed at a distance. Seems to me that a more cost effective alternate for general issue would be green temperate climates and khaki tan for arid climates.
Perhaps camo should be reserved for special ops folks. Is there really a need for camo to be issued to all personnel?
Although the A-TACS is pretty sexy.
Agree completely. OD jungles worked great, even at NTC. Had a heck of a time giving my ACUs away after retiring.
The Army spent 3 years and over $10 million on a PT test that we never implemented, but it won’t spend $24 million on a license for a uniform that 100,000 of us already have and probably spent $500 million on already.
I was wrong. We’ve already spent $1 billion on Multicam.
Crye’s position on the whole thing:
http://soldiersystems.net/2014/03/18/ssd-exclusive-crye-precision-speaks-regarding-us-army-efforts-adopt-new-camouflage/
Anybody notice how those Russian “soldiers” (are they actually military or what?) we see in the Ukraine don’t waste money on the “camouflage pattern du jour?” Just plain old OD green seems to work just fine for them, as it did for the US military from roughly 1940 until 1981 or so.
Their “cook kids camo” doesn’t seem to be helping the Ukrainian soldiers much, does it?
Seems to me that once you get more than a few feet away, most “camo” patterns will just “blob out” anyway.
I don’t know anything about the functionality of the ACU clothing design, as I retired just before that uniform became standard but as far as the camo pattern, it seems useless. Just go back to OD green.
Posers to invest heavily in new cammo. Gravel’s comments were right on. BZ
A few years ago when I was on the Army staff, a $25M bill for PM solider could just about be signed off on by a council of colonels using OCO funds. I sat in meetings and watched them drop billions on stuff that we all knew would be sitting in a depot at best, or deliberately blown to pieces at worst in a few years.
Our unit was among some of the first from the NG to be issued ACUs when we were getting ready to go to A-Stan at Camp Shelby,MS. We called them “pajamas” not just because they’re so frumpy-looking, they fell apart in no time as well! I think that joke of a uniform came from some Army politicians in the Pentagon shitting themselves thinking that the USMC had just one-upped them, so they came up with that to make themselves feel special! Velcro on the cargo pockets? Yeah, fuckin’ brilliant, after just two months in the litterbox it had to be replaced or you walked around looking like Joe Shit the Ragman.
Crye was given access to the info that the Natick National Lab had been working on after pressure from John Murtha. Yes, the Army developed multicam and was forced to give the data to Crye who then pattented it. Do not cry for Crye.
Ran into a couple Seabee’s on one of my final drills, BA or “insert buzzword here”.
They had their new temperate climate utilities on.
Good camo and well designed pockets.
Buttons where needed and limited Velcro.
May have to see if they are available for purchase.
Found a photo.
http://laststandonzombieisland.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/type-2-and-3-uniform.jpg
A better image.
http://i80.servimg.com/u/f80/18/03/03/32/dscn0293.jpg
Somebody at Crye Precision must have took a shit in some colonel’s soup instead of just pissing in it for an outcome like this.
$24 mil for the US Army is hobo pocket change.
Damn, US Army. YOU CRAY!
You know, I’ve tried playing commando paintball with my platoon on a non-drill weekend (get your minds our of the gutter, it involved two teams of ten on a square mile of forest). Me and two others didn’t get hit once and we were wearing the older style BDU. One was wearing an OpFor Tiger Stripe, the rest were wearing ACUs and two were in the deployment-style ACU.
Those of us in BDU didn’t get shot once. The guy in the Tigerstripe got hit because he was moving at the wrong time. The ACUs seemed to almost fluoresce in the woods. They stuck out like a nun in a whore house.
Why did we switch away from the actual camouflage design for something that looked like a six year old using a paint program?
Up here in NE the ACU’s freaking glow in the woods.
Used to be able to stop the truck and slide into the woodline for irrigation pit stops on the way to/back from drill wearing the old BDU’s.
New we were in trouble when I tried it in ACU’s and everyone started honking and waiving.
I once stood still in BDU’s and face camo next to a tree and had an OPFOR patrol walk right by me.
Was standing very still and not blinking.
I said hello to the middle guy and they all freaked.
The not moving is what works, you can be wearing the absolute best camo, but if you make a move something to someone will see you.
Now with cameras with computer programs comparing pictures from second to second it is getting near impossible to stay hidden.
My old BDU’s are the ones that I liked.
It is amazing how only the waist part manages to shrink over the years though.
Even more so since retirement.
Concur with waistband challenge.
I am finally cleaning out old footlockers and have USMC UT’s from 70’s up to ACU’s.
The sizes started out as small regular and culminated at large regular.
The camo pattern saga started with the woodland pattern BDU/Utilities based on concealment in the most probable arena. Whoops, now we transition to arenas with no foliage. But then something changed. Since Everyone, US and allies, wore the same pattern, how to you identify troops at the exchange? Are they Marines or Malays? Once the USMC created their own uniform, everyone, inside the US and Outside, had to have their own. I think the issue of effective camo fell off the table to make room for cool looking at the Club