Our friends at Soldier Systems have been track­ing the devel­op­ment of a new camo scheme designed for the Afghan fight by Army offi­cials who were man­dated by con­gress to do so after hear­ing com­plaints from the field.

Their report­ing shows that the ser­vice has basi­cally tweaked the pixel pat­tern a bit, added some coy­ote brown to the mix and sat­is­fied the Gucci camo cadre with a bit of Multi-​​cam-​​esque cur­va­ture sprin­kled in.

I admire the Army’s attempt here, but I think most wear­ers will be skep­ti­cal — at first blush it’s damned ugly. And as I’ve always said: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.

But clearly the UCP pat­tern needs revamp­ing and the idea of mul­ti­ple uni­forms for dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments may need to be re-​​reconsidered. I’m sure our friends at Soldier Systems will keep a close eye on the field tests and we’ll bring you their results as soon as we can.

Natick has been busy devel­op­ing sev­eral new vari­ants of UCP which retain the base pat­tern but replace indi­vid­ual col­ors. Word has it that some of them are down right ugly. It has recently been revealed by Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, PEO-​​Soldier that the new UCP-​​Delta which inte­grates Coyote Brown into the pat­tern along with Multicam will be eval­u­ated in Afghanistan begin­ning in October. In response to the Congressional direc­tive to field a new camo pat­tern for oper­a­tions in Afghanistan two Battalions worth of uni­forms will be tested.

– Christian

Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I ran across a per­fect exam­ple of that over at Soldier Systems blog which fea­tures a neat lit­tle post on an updated ver­sion of the trench periscope.

With all these walled com­pounds and impromtu urban sniper pos­tions, the US Tactical Supply Scout Sniper Periscope Kit is a back to the future update of the Dough Boy sharpshooter’s best friend.

U.S. Tactical Supply offers the Scout Sniper Periscope Kit (NSN 1240–01-571‑5004). The kit is com­prised of am anodized alu­minum tri­pod mount han­dle with 1/​4 20 threads, Desert Camo SwatScope 3M Camoclad Wrap Kit, alu­minum hard case, belt hook, AN/​PVS-​​14 Adapter, flash­light attach­ment, and a soft sling case. Its every­thing you need to put the periscope imme­di­ately into action and can be used for a vari­ety of obser­va­tion appli­ca­tions in addi­tion to use by a Sniper sec­tion.

Sometimes it’s not about UAVs, ther­mal imagers and ground bots…sometimes it’s just a sim­ple mat­ter of refrac­tion, defrac­tion and a sneak peek above the roof line to zero in on the bad guys.

Maybe US tac­ti­cal has an adap­tor kit to attach the periscope to a M110 or M40 rifle…?

(Gouge: SS)

– Christian

Our friends from Soldier Systems have a great post this week on a gad­get designed to gen­er­ate power through kinetic energy.

We’re used to hear­ing one of the military’s biggest com­plaints: “we love all the giz­mos, it’s just that we hate the short bat­tery life.”

Well, this could be the answer for Joes on the move.

Be sure to read more Soldier Systems con­tent. We’re proud to be part­nered with what we believe is the Internet’s best tac­ti­cal gear news site.

Developed by Tremont Electric based in Cleveland, Ohio the nPower Personal Energy Generator (PEG) is very light­weight, ultra rugged, and com­pletely silent. The PEG weighs a mere nine ounces packed into a nine inch long cylin­der that har­vests kinetic energy from the human stride and turns it into 2.5 watts of electricity.

The com­mer­cial tech­nol­ogy has been adapted for mil­i­tary use and under­gone lim­ited eval­u­a­tions by the Army, Marines and a Joint cus­tomer. There are cur­rently two mil­i­ta­rized ver­sions of the device and they’re devel­op­ing some addi­tional ver­sions for spe­cial­ized use. The first ver­sion pow­ers a hand­held device (ie, a Garmin GPS, iPod, etc) and the other is a backpack-​​mounted ver­sion that can power a Toughbook, a radio, or other tech a warfighter may have. Both of these devices can, in the­ory, pro­vide power indef­i­nitely, as long as youre mov­ing. Current sys­tems are crafted from Anodized Aluminum but plans are afoot to tran­si­tion to Carbon Fiber in order to shave weight.

The mil­i­tary hand­held device comes in two sizes. The first is nine inches long, nine ounces, and power out­put at 5 watts and the sec­ond is six inches long, weighs seven ounces, and power out­put at 2.5 watts. It can be mounted to PALS webbing.

Additionally, they have demon­strated a larger back­pack mounted lap­top device. It is envi­sioned to be com­prised of two larger units run­ning in par­al­lel inside of a ded­i­cated back­pack. To work suc­cess­fully it demands more mass so a min­i­mum load of 30 lbs is required. While it is heav­ier, it will pro­duce up to 100 watts.

The PEG offers a cou­ple of oper­a­tional advan­tages not real­ized with many other tech­nolo­gies. It is tem­per­a­ture inde­pen­dent so it will work in arc­tic and desert envi­ron­ments with no mod­i­fi­ca­tion. Additionally, it has no ther­mal sig­na­ture like fuel cells, which means it can­not be detected in the Infrared spectrum.

Tremont Electric was rec­og­nized by Business Week as one of America’s most promis­ing start ups.

Visit Tremont Electric for more info. Tremont Electric is rep­re­sented by Technical Applications Group.

– Soldier Systems

Our good friend at Soldier Systems has excel­lent sourc­ing in the tac­ti­cal equip­ment indus­try and has been fol­low­ing the devel­op­ment of Army camo pat­terns very closely.

He offered up this piece from his Soldier Systems blog and I invite you to read more of his com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of the sim­mer­ing camo pat­tern debate HERE.

In light of an impend­ing direc­tive from Congress to the Army to get their camo house in order, rumors con­tinue to cir­cu­late about an upcom­ing test involv­ing four camo pat­terns with the Army’s cur­rent Universal Camouflage pat­tern serv­ing as a control.

The four pat­terns are MARPAT-​​Woodland, MARPAT-​​Desert, Multicam, and Desert All Over Brush (seen below). Originally, we had heard that the fourth pat­tern would be the 3-​​color Desert pat­tern issued to all ser­vices prior to adop­tion of their new dis­tinc­tive uni­forms. However, based on some recent, unver­i­fied infor­ma­tion we believe it is actu­ally the Desert All Over Brush which inter­est­ingly gave a very good show­ing dur­ing the Army camo tri­als of 2003–2004. According to a Natick report, a mod­i­fied vari­ant of the Desert ver­sion All Over Bush pat­tern per­formed best in all envi­ron­ments. You can also access a brief­ing pre­sented on the sub­ject at the 2004 International Soldier Systems Conference here.

Based on a series of eval­u­a­tions doc­u­mented in the report and brief­ing slides Natick devel­oped the vari­ant of All Over Brush pattern.

Having said all of that, the info on that par­tic­u­lar pat­tern is old news. At some point in the Spring of 2004, the Army took a seri­ous side­step from all of its research and adopted UCP. If the rumors are true, look­ing at what is on the table, nei­ther Marine pat­terns would really be con­sid­ered seri­ous can­di­dates due to a vari­ety of morale, and as we have dis­cussed before, brand­ing issues. You think the black beret issue was rough, imag­ine the out­cry from two ser­vices if the Army adopted a Marine camo pat­tern. Consequently, while effec­tive, we don’t con­sider the MARPAT vari­ants as seri­ous con­tenders. This leaves, depend­ing on who is telling the story, either 3-​​color Desert which is still used by some US Navy forces (and a few oth­ers) or the pro­to­type Desert All Over brush pat­tern in addi­tion to Crye’s Multicam. While there are lim­ited stocks of 3-​​color equip­ment still in the sys­tem, vir­tu­ally none of it is in the con­fig­u­ra­tion cur­rently used by US forces. If it were adopted, the US Soldier would lit­er­ally take a five year step back in capa­bil­ity until pro­duc­tion of cur­rent issue equip­ment could be accom­plished. Additionally, there is a polit­i­cal dimen­sion to such a move. UCP was sold as a supe­rior pat­tern to both Woodland and 3-​​Color Desert. Someone would nat­u­rally ask the ques­tion of why the Army dis­carded a pat­tern in favor of some­thing less effective.

This leaves Desert All Over Brush and Multicam. Multicam has been used oper­a­tionally by select US forces to great suc­cess and even more impor­tantly, is cur­rently sup­ported by the US indus­trial base. A wide vari­ety of Berry Compliant prod­ucts (and raw mate­ri­als) are avail­able as COTS items. Additionally, indus­try already offers ver­sions of cur­rent issue equip­ment in Multicam. Furthermore, there are numer­ous light­weight and multi-​​purpose Soldier Systems items designed specif­i­cally for envi­ron­ments like Afghanistan. Multicam is a mature, widely avail­able, low hang­ing fruit. On the other hand, adop­tion of Desert All Over Brush would require long lead times as fab­ric mills first per­fect and then pro­duce suf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties of mate­ri­als. Only then could uni­forms and equip­ment for our Soldiers begin to be procured.

We are wait­ing with bated breath to see if these rumors are true and what’s more, if they are, what will come of them.

– Soldier Systems

Our friend from Soldier Systems dropped me a line to give us a head’s up on his lat­est post on the Asymmetric Warfare Group’s equip­ping ini­tia­tive to select troops in Afghanistan. He asked that we cross post it here for our read­ers to review.

Basically, the way I under­stand it, the AWG has been look­ing at off-​​the-​​shelf items pri­mar­ily from the moun­taineer­ing and cus­tom tac­ti­cal com­mu­nity to lighten the load of the aver­age Joe in com­bat envi­ron­ments like Afghanistan. Everything from boots to buck­les, the AWG’s list is impressive.

My col­league Matt Cox at Army Times has writ­ten about some of this, but I’m not sure he had the space to include all of the items…but in this Internet age, we can.

There have been numer­ous ques­tions float­ing about the equip­ment cho­sen for the Armys Asymmetric Warfare Group field­ing of a bat­tal­ions worth of light­weight COTS equip­ment to the 4th ID for their cur­rent deploy­ment to Afghanistan. In an effort to dis­pel any rumors, we got a list of the equip­ment issued but have removed sen­si­tive mate­ri­als includ­ing any ref­er­ences to armor.

Smartwool
Mens Sport NTS Crew T-​​Shirt
Mens Sport NTS Bottom
Mens Microweight NTS Crew Long Sleeved T-​​Shirt
Mens Microweight NTS Long Underwear Drawers
Mens Microweight NTS Tee
Mens Microweight Boxer
Socks PhD Outdoor Light Crew
Socks PhD Outdoor Medium Crew

Arcteryx
Knee Caps (Green/​Grey)

Merrell
Mens Chameleon EVO Mid Gore Tex
Womens Chameleon ARC Mid Gore Tex

Asolo
Mens Fugitive GTX
Womens Stynger GTX

Suunto
M-​​3 DL Handheld Compass
Wrist Watch GPS X10

Garmin
ETREX Vista HCX

Petzl
Headlamp TACTIKKA XP

Surefire
Weapon Light M600C (kit)

Magpul
Magazine (PMAG)

Aimpoint
Optic Micro T1 w/​ Larue mount

Mountain Hardwear
Phantom 45 Sleeping bag

Nemo

GoGo Shelter, Olive Drab

Mystery Ranch
3 Day Assault Packs w/​ Bolsters

Read the rest of the list HERE…

– Soldier Systems

Wearing their Rapid Equipping Force hat, The Armys Asymmetric Warfare Group set about to assem­ble a pack­age of Commercial Off the Shelf Soldier Systems equip­ment to con­duct a demon­stra­tion with mem­bers of the 4th Infantry Division deploy­ing to Afghanistan. The aim was to demon­strate that these alter­na­tive tech­nolo­gies will enhance the com­bat effec­tive­ness of our troops fight­ing in the bru­tal ter­rain of Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, a long brew­ing bat­tle between the Armys Acquisition com­mu­nity and the REF seemed to come to a head two weeks ago when the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology halted the ship­ment of the equip­ment pack­age into the­ater and began to ask some very pointed ques­tions about the capa­bil­ity of the armor pack­age cho­sen. Long-​​term fric­tion has come about as the REF con­tin­ues to con­duct rapid iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, assess­ment, and field­ing of crit­i­cal warfight­ing tech­nolo­gies while the tra­di­tional acqui­si­tion sys­tem takes a much more method­i­cal approach and field­ing of new sys­tems requires longer lead times.

The sys­tem in ques­tion is the MBAV cut­away plate car­rier pro­duced by Eagle Industries used in con­junc­tion with a hard plate only cer­ti­fied for use by USSOCOM. All of this is fully in the Armys purview and unknown to most sit­ting on the side­lines of this issue, PEO-​​Soldier is in the midst of an eval­u­a­tion of five cut away armor plate car­ri­ers. It is highly prob­a­ble that the cut­away sys­tem cho­sen by AWG is also a can­di­date in this PEO-​​Soldier evaluation.

The sit­u­a­tion seemed to take on a life of its own and after two weeks of con­sid­er­a­tion the Army has cho­sen to field the exper­i­men­tal pack­age and it will be shipped for use by 480 Soldiers across two bat­tal­ions of the deploy­ing 4th ID. According to Army sources, short notice test­ing was com­pleted to pro­vide a safety release of the equip­ment. However, the new light­weight hard armor plates used by SOCOM will be replaced by the Armys cur­rent issue plates.

Data col­lec­tion will be accom­plished by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

– Soldier Systems

Down East are the geniuses behind such prod­ucts as the FastMag, Snap Dragon buckle, and MOLLE Frame.

Amid lit­tle fan­fare they unveiled their lat­est incar­na­tion of the FastMag at SHOT Show. As the pro­to­type FastMag passed from hand to hand among gear afi­ciona­dos, the inven­tors explained the evo­lu­tion­ary improve­ments over pre­vi­ous ver­sions. The great­est improve­ment is the attach­ment mech­a­nism. A thin, rub­ber­ized, PALS com­pat­i­ble strap has been inte­grated directly into the design and pulls over a tab to secure the pouch via tension.

Additionally, they intro­duced the abil­ity to shin­gle the FastMag with Tactical Tailors MALICE Clip. The pouches can be stacked on top of one another or in con­junc­tion with soft pouches as seen below. Additionally, you will notice that the bungee is miss­ing. Down East felt that it was super­flu­ous and drove up cost. Instead they engi­neered holes into the design so that the user could inte­grate a bungee if they felt the need.

The new design is still in the pro­to­type phase but if past per­for­mance is any indi­ca­tor, these should begin to be avail­able soon.

To announce their new Direct Sales pro­gram, Down East also showed a ver­sion of their ruck­sack. In order to test their lat­est frame (DEI 1606) and sus­pen­sion (in this case made by Eagle), Down East com­mis­sioned Log House Designs to man­u­fac­ture a 2400 in2 pack. They are pleased to now offer lim­ited num­bers of these for sale in UCP and Multicam (avail­able Late Jan 09) as well as civil­ian Black and Navy Blue.

The pack is a sim­ple top loader with ample PALS web­bing to attach acces­sories and fea­tures a com­fort­able suspension.

– Soldier Systems

While there still is no offi­cial announce­ment, Granite Gear and their part­ner Montgomery Marketing Inc have announced that they have cap­tured at least some of the SOCOM Pack pro­gram. Two packs were out for com­pe­ti­tion and they have won the Patrol Pack cat­e­gory with their 2400 cubic inch Raid pack and they will begin man­u­fac­tur­ing within 60 days.

Mystery Ranch, long thought to be the leader in the large Recce Ruck cat­e­gory has won and will be offer­ing a cus­tom design based on their inter­nal frame technology.

Congratulations to both Granite Tactical and Mystery Ranch!

The Granite Tactical Gear line is cur­rently avail­able from Extreme Outfitters. Mystery Ranch infor­ma­tion can be accessed here.

Picture from Extreme Outfitters.

– Soldier Systems

The Marine Corps is work­ing on a spe­cial­ized detach­able chest rig for armor vehi­cle crew­men to be used as a quick-​​attach/​detach capa­bil­ity for ILBE pouches.

The Detachable Platform Chest Rig will inte­grate with the Modular Tactical Vest (MTV) or recently fielded Scalable Plate Carrier (SPC). Vehicle space con­straints make it dif­fi­cult for mounted crew­men to per­form their mis­sion while wear­ing pouches attached to their armor car­rier. They require a slick chest area but once they exit the vehi­cle need a means to rapidly inte­grate ammu­ni­tion and other crit­i­cal equip­ment to their armor.

As envi­sioned, the chest rig is a two piece design con­sist­ing of a vest foun­da­tion piece and remov­able pouch attach­ment sys­tem. The vest foun­da­tion piece will be affixed to the MTV/​ SPC and serve as the base for the pouch attach­ment piece. The pouch attach­ment piece will hold the required pouches and be stored in the vehi­cle dur­ing nor­mal vehi­cle oper­a­tions. The pouch attach­ment piece will essen­tially snap into place once the crew­man dismounts.

Planned field­ing is cur­rently just over 6000 sys­tems but if the rig shows util­ity expect to see it adopted by other ser­vice components.

– Soldier Systems

Under devel­op­ment for three years, the ARC Magazine was designed specif­i­cally for USSOCOMs SCAR pro­gram. However, it will also fit M16-​​style weapons includ­ing receivers with out of spec mag­wells. Unfortunately, mag­well tol­er­ances has been an issue for many mag­a­zines for years going back to the Israeli Orlite mags that hit the US mar­ket over 20 years ago and an ongo­ing prob­lem ever since. Manufactured from a high strength poly­mer, the ARC mag­a­zine will be avail­able ini­tially in 5.5645mm and 7.62
51mm for both FN SCAR light and heavy weapons. 

Notice how the lower half of the mag­a­zine has a some­what more pro­nounced curve than a stan­dard 30 round M16 mag­a­zine. The allows the mag­a­zine to have the opti­mal ammu­ni­tion stack. Additionally, the joint is secured with an adhe­sive with a higher strength than the actual mag­a­zine body. 

This is a no main­te­nance mag­a­zine other than to brush it down and spray it out with com­pressed air or water. Also, note that there is no floor plate. This means that it is a five sided box con­struc­tion and extremely strong. Additionally, the chromium spring resists cor­ro­sion. Tangodown has also devel­oped a mar­itime ver­sion with a one way drain valve for OTB operations.

(more…)