And they are:
1. ADS, Inc. (teamed with Hyperstealth, Inc.) – Virginia Beach, Virginia
2. Brookwood Companies, Inc- New York, NY
3. Crye Precision, LLC – Brooklyn, NY
4. Kryptek, Inc. – Fairbanks, AK
5. Government pattern developed at U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center (NSRDEC), Natick, MA
Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, the previous US Army Program Executive Officer (PEO) Soldier, was sacked today for calling out Afghan President Hamid Karzi for comments that his nation would support Pakistan instead of the US in a conflict between the two. Up until today, he was the Deputy Commander of NATO’s training programs in Afghanistan. Read more about it over at Army Times.
Read MoreThere are a lot of questions surrounding MultiCam uniforms right now, and PEO SOLDIER has taken the time to setup a Frequently Asked Questions list. Take a look at the below link, and see if your questions are answered. If nothing else, read through it and answer the questions you hear others asking. Pure genius…
http://peosoldier.armylive.dodlive.mil/2010/05/07/the-latest-on-multicam/
Lt. Col. Brian Pearl, 2-12 INF in Kunar Province, Afghanistan
Updated: Now with more details from our Friday morning interview.
According to Matt Cox at Army Times, the Army announced Friday morning that it will begin fielding MultiCam ACUs to forces flowing into Afghanistan as soon as this summer. Program officials told us explicitly that we would begin to see MultiCam fielding in August. The Army plans to begin the fielding in two overlapping stages.
The initial push will be to get MultiCam on 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, at Fort Polk, La., and the Iowa National Guard’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, both deploying for OEF this summer. Once that effort is underway, the Army will then concentrate on getting new ACU-MultiCam and selected OCIE to currently deployed OEF-A soldiers.
Boom.
According to the Army’s test results, MultiCam was the only camo pattern to rank first in all three categories of the Army’s photosimulation evaluation.
… UCP-Delta did well in the detectability, not as well as MultiCam, but pretty well. UCP-Delta did perform significantly better than UCP and it would have been cheap, but we didn’t want to go ‘cheap Charlie’ on the soldiers. If we can give them an edge, we wanted to give them an edge even if that meant spending some extra money.
Colonel Bill Cole, Project manager for Soldier Protection and Individual Equipment, U.S. Army, PEO Soldier
The MultiCam uniforms will have a few other improvements that are already headed for future ACU contracts. OEF-A bound soldiers will receive about $4,000 worth of gear including four sets of MultiCam uniforms, four combat shirts and matching combat equipment.
Read MoreSoldiersystems.net is reporting Gen. George Casey’s approval of a plan for the immediate fielding of MultiCam to soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom. We haven’t yet gotten the official word but have no reason to doubt the report after confirming it with our own sources. We expect an announcement from the Army shortly.
UPDATE: This one is going all the way to the Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John McHugh, for approval. So even though General Casey has signed off on the recommendation, the fat lady hasn’t sung yet. We hope to have the final word tomorrow.
I wonder why the Secretary of the Army is weighing in? I don’t know if it’s a rubber-stamp sort of thing, but it seems like the chief’s signature would normally be enough to approve a uniform regulation. Perhaps it’s a play to put some political capital behind the request. The Army will need it if it goes up to the Hill to ask for help funding the camo change introduced by the recently deceased Rep. John Murtha.
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Someone posted this update to PEO Soldier’s Twitter feed via a mobile phone text message. I wonder if this was a meant for another recipient since all other posts to PEOSoldier’s account were made either from Twitter’s Web site or an iPhone application.
The latest (as of last night) we’ve heard is that Gen. Casey is now mulling it over.
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For all of you that have noticed PEO Soldier’s Web site is down, we received a note from them today saying they hope to have their Web issues resolved by the end of the week. Luckily, we can still go to their Facebook page.
No explanation was offered. I assume it was caused by one of two things: A rodent chewing on a wire or downtime while PEO feverishly Photoshops a newly chosen camo pattern into all of the existing photos in advance of the camo decision.
UPDATE: They are back with no changes to the site.
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Here’s a nice in-theater pic of six members of the nine-man team that was formed to help evaluate alternative camouflage patterns for soldiers in Afghanistan. The team spent 17 days in-country, taking photos of AOR II, the current Universal Camouflage Pattern, Multicam, Desert Brush, UCP-Delta and Mirage.
They went outside of the wire every day, provided their own security and even came under enemy fire on one occasion.
The mission produced more than 1,000 photos that will be used to create a photosimulation test that hundreds of soldiers will take this month. The effort could result in a new pattern for Afghanistan by late January.
See my story on the Army Times.
Read MoreHere are the twelve contenders that went up against UCP in Natick’s 2007-2009 Photosimulation Camouflage Detection test. The five patterns at the bottom didn’t make the cut because they didn’t perform well enough to be considered, or were too similar to other patterns in the test. The Spec 4 patterns were specificaly DQ’d because their desert variant was available for the test.
With a little creativity, Natick could have made a badass photo calendar. All they needed was a set of well proportioned female models holding guns and the study would have paid for itself.
Matt Cox is reporting at ArmyTimes.com that the Army’s Natick labs performed a two-year study in 2007 that ranked UCP as the least effective universal camo pattern of the five patterns they tested. He FOIA’d the government for the Natick’s Photosimulation Camouflage Detection Test report and got it after PEO Soldier refused to provided it.
While it’s great programmatic drama, I have to wonder what would happen if someone at PEO Soldier actually just came out and admitted that they chose the best camo pattern that branded soldiers from the other services while providing adequate camouflage without going broke.
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