Looks like the Army has chosen a new camouflage pattern to replace the much maligned and disliked UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern). Well at least they have unofficially chosen one – “Scorpion”.
It took the Army about two years of testing to discover that their current issue UCP camo just isn’t up to snuff. During testing that ended in 2009 it was found that the camo performed miserably when compared to the Marine’s digital camo and the ever popular Multi-cam.
And believe it or not it seems that the Army has been trying to find a replacement ever since. Just last week the Army announced that it would field a “family” of camouflage patterns – A dark woodland pattern, a light desert pattern and one in between. But so far no official word yet, other than there were still more tests to go.
They have some pretty interesting digital patterns to choose from. Marine digital MARPAT (Marine Pattern – Desert and Woodland) was one of their top choices and from the people that I have talked to, it works very well in the field.
They also liked Multicam, but it seems that the costs to field it would be to high.
Though not mentioned, I am curious how the new “organic” digital patterns from A-TACS would have fared on the test. The A-TACS FG woodland camo is amazing:
I also noticed that they tested Syrian, French and Iraqi patterns but somehow German Flecktarn didn’t even make the list. It works extremely well in dark woodland environments:
So what did they choose?
Well, according to Military.com, the Sergeant Major of the Army is telling all the senior Sergeants that the Army will be transitioning to the “Scorpion” pattern.
Believe it or not it is a pattern that the Army has already owned for 12 years and looks very similar to, drum roll please…
Multicam!
Apparently it was created by Crye (the creator of Multicam) for the OFW program, but uses a slightly different pattern. In doing so, one could assume that the pattern would test out very similar to Multicam.
So there you have it, several years of testing and it looks like the Army is going to use a pattern that they already own!
