Multicam

cadet85

5-Year Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2013
Messages
281
So our school adopted a platoon in Afghanistan and sent them care packages. They posted images on their platoon's Facebook page of them getting their boxes and what not. I noticed they had the new multi cam uniforms. Does anybody know about future rollout plans for distributing these, or are there any plans for West Point to switch to these in the near future? Just curious and haven't heard much news for Multi-cam.
 
a hunch -- probably no change at USMA for a few years

A hunch, and I’m not in any way trying to be snarky … it took USMA so long to get rid of the garrison cap, I would not expect them to be on the leading edge of new uniform adoption/distribution, doesn’t seem like it actually provides much of a benefit to a cadet except that of being uniform (no pun intended) with the rest of the regular Army. Just a hunch.
 
LOL! I just sent this article to my prior service 19D (Cavalry Scout) CC DS...and I had him going for a little while...at least for a minute he knew how we felt when they made the black beret the standard head gear for the entire Army! I changed the dates from 2011 to 2014 to make it more believable but he figured it out quickly. Thanks for the laugh!:thumb:
 
Haha pretty funny! I scrolled through the pictures first so I knew immediately. But still, the quotes, "It's just down right American." lol. The dog was wearing it, and the guy wrestling… nice touches.:yllol:
 
A hunch, and I’m not in any way trying to be snarky … it took USMA so long to get rid of the garrison cap, I would not expect them to be on the leading edge of new uniform adoption/distribution, doesn’t seem like it actually provides much of a benefit to a cadet except that of being uniform (no pun intended) with the rest of the regular Army. Just a hunch.

Given 2011, and maybe 2012 cadets still had some Woodland/BDU era gear, you are probably right.

The whole camo thing is a mess currently, as it's entangled with congressional law now (NDAA 2014) that requires any new uniforms adopted to be used by all 4 services. (I guess USCG gets a pass)

A Multicam (OCP) variant would probably be acceptable, but the licensing costs were higher than desired by the Army, so that was killed or on long hold. But the reported licensing costs were lower than what they proposed spending on alternative commercial camo testing. And, they could have adopted OCP for minimal additional licensing as part of the original OEFCP agreement.

Then apparently the Army threw out some half baked ideas (DTP) not too far from what made UCP a mess. (existing pattern, throw a different color pallet on it without appropriate testing). Which the Marines rightfully balked at.

Meanwhile, the Navy fielded a decent pattern (AOR) for Seabees and NSW that did pretty well in camo testing, and could be a multiservice option. But the Marines complained it was too close to MARPAT, etc. Meanwhile, the Navy has $10m worth of NWU-1 (blueberry camo) on hand. But with a small problem of flammability and being very hot.

And the Air Force still wants it's unique look, etc. So the odds of meeting the congressional restrictions for new uniforms, finding budget, etc are pretty slim.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is adopting multicam or variants: Denmark, Georgia, Montenegro, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the UK, with usage within major units (usually SF) of Argentina, Austria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Iraq, Jordan, Maldives, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine and Sweden.

And Army will still wear ACU with UCP camo. But it does work great where it was actually tested, on Army bases where everything is either gravel or painted. ACU: Always C U :smile:
 
There is no "new" multicam uniform yet. What you saw was OCP, which has been in use for about 4 years. It is not approved for regular wear outside OEF.
 
Back
Top