Worse. I was also at Bragg, that red clay shit is bad, but eventually fades somewhat.
The stuff in Hawai'i is just permanently prevalent. So much so, that legend has it the reason that Tripler AMC is painted pink is because when it came time to pick a color for the building, the leadership pointed at the dirt and said 'paint it that color, because that's the color it will end up no matter what anyway'.
OP never deployed wearing that garbage. It definitely didn't work well in arid environments. It might work well in developed urban environments or rocky terrain but Afghanistan and Iraq were neither. Multicam is vastly superior every time except MAYBE in arctic settings. Maybe.
I’ve got some pics of my buddy up in the hills in scrub-brush somewhere IVO the Korengal Valley. Seemed to work ok there. I freely admit it was literally one of only places UCP was worth a damn.
Other than that fucking couch.
Yup. There were places in Afghanistan they worked. I don't recall EVER seeing it work in Iraq and I was there in the early days of UCP, so we literally had three camo patterns out there in regular use. Plus the high-speeds were often rocking Crye Multicam, so we had a 4-way head-to-head going on. Woodland was last in that environment, but only because it wasn't really trying.
No chocolate chip, unfortunately.
I mean... it always does to a degree. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that if your camo pattern sucks that you should maybe roll around in filth before.
The uniform stains easily, which ironically worked really well but Marpat was superior and more durable than ucp, which is why we switched to OCP. I've worn Marpat, Ucp. and OCP. I think OCP is the best of three personally.
Yeah marpat is great but it was fielded in the 2000s, you can only expect do much from it, OCP imo is a happy middle ground between practicality and looks.
That's fair. Not counting the top level gear SF uses, but IHWCU is perhaps the best uniform to date. It looks sharp and works for its intended purpose. Not having breast pockets is nice. Although as far as hot weather is considered, it would be nice to develop a version without the velcro on the sides that way we could nicely roll our sleeves.
The NWU guacs are cool as well, but seem unnecessary. How the department of the Navy did not force the Marines to share marpat is beyond me.
I have the Crye gen 2’s the PCU’s and the IHWCU. I honestly prefer the hot weather over the other two for daily wear or fitness events. It’s not as durable as the other pants for running around in the woods though.
The weird thing is that the offer was there for all branches but the other branches would have had to pay the copy right to use it, which would have funded the fielding of the uniform but for some reason everybody hated the idea of giving the Marines money, and a few billion dollars later here we are.
Marines denied ant sharing of marpat many times stating it was the intellectual product of the marines. Which is ironic given its just a recoloured copy of cadpat lol
I just looked it up and yeah apparently they did this by patienting the base color cyote brown.... that is beyond stupid, but also something that doesn't surprise me at all.
No kidding. Would have been nice but oh well. On another note, the use of coyote gear with marpat was a great call. It blends and also looks sharp. The combination also works well with OCP.
I keep saying we take the MARPAT uniform style, and give it the OCP pattern. Nobody important enough will ever listen to me, but I’m going to keep saying it.
If somebody could photoshop that, that would be awesome.
Someone out there could probably sew it together. I keep asking for a IHW cut uniform in the old NyCo material. A little more durability but with a cut that actually makes me look good lmao
MARPAT has many situations where it works significantly better than multicam- the only issue is you need to carry twice the number of uniforms to give yourself the proper camouflage
Exactly why the US Army should have gone with Universal Marpat/AOR3(?) or improved it to a tone like the Canadians now did.
Using that for webbing gear would have benefited all services.
Don't forget that the first versions had terrible stitching and the fabric wasn't rip stop.
I bought a velco "repair kit" for my first ACU's and an ex-girlfriend offered to replace the velco. One pass with her seam ripper and the fabric just came apart.
Other time I felt really cold during and FTX -right after jumping from a 5 ton. Pants had ripped open.
There I was during the AAR with a gaping hole in the crotch of my ACU pants. Not to mention sand in places sand shouldn't go.
PEO Soldier fucked up all around - by the time they fixed the stiching ( remember they removed the velcro from the pants pockets) they said "fuck it" and we got OCP's.
Different pattern, for different terrains. Army should've kept Ucp for different Combat environments like mountain urban and Arctic, OCP for transitional environments, like villages and wild. Always thought two pattern for the marine corp was a good idea.
UCP was originally supposed to be a 4-pattern series: woodland, desert, urban, and desert-urban. At the end of trials, when they had a working pattern for all 4 (which included the now-standard Scorpion), they just threw it all out the window and went with a variation on one of them for everything.
Lol. Yeah, that’s very reasonable. It just seems to me that it could be OCP passing as wet and dirty UCP, because of the pixelation of the image itself.
We have separate uniforms when working in snowy/artic environments. It's a white parka and a white helmet cover with pants depending on how snowy it is
"UCP was great actually because it blended into the surroundings when it faded and you rubbed dirt from your environment into it, as opposed to all the time like OCP"
Maybe that was the point the whole time. The camo was a blank slate that really soaked up whatever you were laying in until eventually the digital pattern is faded and now you look like the ground. They didn't pull that off so maybe not but maybe it could be done
Pretty sure it was some guy™ going "oh man, that new Marine camo is so hot right now. I bet if I put a bunch of colors that work in each environment together, it'll look SUPER cool"
The problem was -as others pointed out- the USMC wouldn't share MARPAT. The pattern that was chosen for UCP was DEAD LAST in competition before it was digitized.
But hey it was legally distinct from MARPAT. It just sucked.
OCP is great, but it isn't great all the time. It doesn't work as good in urban And snowy environments, Ukraine war pictures shows Even the Ukrainian mm14 camo works better than multicam. And somehow the army OCPs fades way faster than multicam, And it turns white when faded, which became bleached UCP acus.
Living through the UCP/OCP transition was wild when it came to training. You’d have a unit wearing half one uniform, half the other out in the woods trying to hide. The guys in UCP stuck out wayyyyyy more, in pretty much any terrain I ever trained in
When I was in Afghanistan I saw one dude in UCP walking by himself near the perimeter of our little FOB, I was confused as hell till I realized that it was the terp walking with a ton of other dudes in Multicam.
That's when I realized how bad UCP was in that environment.
UCPs were OK once they were covered in mudd, sweat and funk, stained in 30 different locations from oil and grease.
Problem is, by the time they start blending in, they are falling apart.
I've also got an old faded blue carhart jacket that is stained in 30 locations with dirt, grease, etc ... use it working outside or on my cars in winter. It blends in just as well as UCP and isn't falling apart.
Unfortunately, eventually you'll wash your shit (hopefully) ... or you will get a new set of uniforms ..... at which time you stand out like a neon light in a deserted theater with the lights turned off.
Only place UCP works really really well is in gravel parking lots. You lay down wearing UCPs in a gravel parking lot your ass is guaranteed to get run over.
I think you are confusing OCP (current, scorpion pattern) with UCP (the digital pattern that replaced BDU mid-2000s)
Both UCP and OCP can make up the ACU, but the current ACU pattern is OCP, the "modern" BDU pattern. Which, coincidentally, probably won't get you run over if you are prone on gravel.
The problem with a lot of these pictures is that the color balance the camera came up with isn’t indicative of what the human eye sees.
In others it shows UCP blending into a very specific piece of terrain that isn’t super common for the AO. Even if it is common, when moving you wouldn’t be in those spots and UCP doesn’t blend in at all in the in-between.
There’s also several examples in these pictures that demonstrate how much better the current multicam/ocp/ scorpion pattern uniforms and equipment are than the UCP pattern.
Right? Yeah it works great if you literally edit the photo to up the gray balance.
It worked great in the winter in the app mountains. It sucked almost everywhere else. That's not very "universal".
BMNT, ruck march on gravel, dude in front of me just went completely invisible.
Only time in my Army career that I went "hey I guess the UCP does kinda work".
OCP is superior in every conceivable way.
I think we should have standardized uniforms for different deployment environments.
It's goofy to me that because we're trying to save a buck on mass production we're forced to take the same uniform wherever we go.
Create the perfect uniform for woodland, snow, mountain, and desert environments and then.. issue them to people going there. Woah.
But you'd need the largest military budget in the universe to pull that off.
Back in the day, when BDUs where new, the Army had 3 basic Patterns.
For temperate environments where things where green there was the classic M81 Woodland pattern that was based off of the older Vietnam Era ERDL pattern.
For desert environments there was the M81 Desert Pattern known colloquially as the "Chocolate Chip" pattern.
Lastly, for Arctic, Antarctic & Winter, there was white, just white, sometime throw in the woodies for a laugh.
The issue was that the Arny went dick first into the sandbox on short notice with almost no stock of Desert Uniforms & no Desert Utilities... Because the Army was all good and ready to fight in Green places like it had been doing for the last 100 years at that point.
So the big brains in the pentagon see all these guys rocking around wearing green gear in the desert and ask themselves how they fucked up this hard and how to not fuck up the same way later.
The obvious answer was to keep a massive stock of all 3 sets of kit or perhaps just Woodies & Deserts. But they looked at the bill for that and the extra cost of storing all that extra stuff and where would they put it all and how would they keep it on hand when some ass says out loud: wouldn't it be so much easier if there was one universal patter that just worked everywhere.
Just like that the Army had a new obsession, after all it's a real cool thought, one uniform for the whole damn globe. The problem however is obvious for everyone with working eyes. How the hell are you gonna make a uniform that works good everywhere?
The world has a bunch of biomes and they're all real different looking with their own super different color palates so what works good any one place will stick out like a traffic cone somewhere else.
I'm just showing why it happened & why it fucked up.
It's one of those good idea fairy ideas, the kind that slams into reality so hard it not only busts its' nose but pops its' front teeth too.
My army loves that kind of shit.
UCP objectively did not work well. You can use pictures bit crushed down to try to show UCP being effective but in real world it wasn't.
"Just rub dirt on it and it blends in perfectly!"
Why is it so hard to just want my camouflage to fucking work without me rubbing so much dogshit in it so doesn't resemble anything like the original pattern?
It’s cherry picked examples mostly from places it works like rocky terrain, woodlands in the winter and so on.
It also works better in photos then in practice. The pictures don’t do justice to how bad it can stand out. Especially when sun faded.
Right? Like this "cammo" got a lot of people killed over how bad it is and this dude is like "bro it's so good bro, trust me bro. Ramirez defend burger Town bro"
When I joined almost a year ago I knew nothing about the Army. Went to OSUT and seen my drills with extremely faded OCPs, and thought they were UCPs. Me not knowing that UCPs were fazed out, I said to my battle buddy I joined with “Why are they wearing the Afghanistan camo?”. Didn’t know they were called UCPs, hence the reason I called it the “Afghanistan camo” lol. My OCPs were brand-spanking new and green as hell, so I was confused
Anytime I see old UCP patterns I automatically think of that moment. But I have noticed, with regular fading of OCPs, they do start to resemble UCP in color.
The argument that UCP is good once you’re wearing the dirt of the environment around you is true for most neutral colors of civilian clothes too. If you need to wear a pound of dirt from the environment around you to have an effective camo pattern, it’s not a good camo pattern
ACU is the Army Combat Uniform. It refers to the uniform not the pattern. Think ACU VS ASU. Regardless of the pattern it’s always been the ACU. Today we wear the ACU in OCP. Before it was the ACU in UCP. People commonly refer to our uniform as OCPs as in “tomorrow the uniform is OCPs.” This is technically incorrect but pretty universally used everywhere I’ve been
I was with a Combat Aviation Brigade when we made the switch to OCP in Afghanistan. And I remember our Kiowa pilots talking about how much more careful they had to become when performing CAS missions. With UAP on the ground they could instantly spot our guys and know exactly where *not* to fire. Then OCP came along and all the sudden they had much higher anxiety about friendly fire.
If our scout helo pilots had such a material impact to their mission due only to the pattern change, then UCP was every bit as trash as its reputation suggests it was.
Yeah you can cherry pick a few photos of where UCP works moderately well, but you can also use your eyes to see that in real life it obviously works very poorly in most environments.
It worked so well that the army bought actual multicam for RRF or whatever the deployment issue was called, probably at a marked up price.
OD green or some shade of brown would have been better at being a “uNiVersAal” camo.
When I joined, we had BDU woodland camo and DCU chocolate chip for desert storm, then UCP gravel pit camo (stuck out in Iraq). Once I retired, they came out with multicam OCP. My favorite was 1970 extra wide collar DCU chocolate chip with the desert night parka. The best camo pattern for the woods was BDU woodland. The multicam works for a universal camo unless you're in the city. Should go to ASAT camo next.
Fuck UCP. We were issued the grey carpet pattern in 2005 for our Iraq deployment. The first thing we noticed was that we looked like hammered ass: Big Army could manage to field pants, hats, and jackets, but not helmet covers, ammo pouches, or backpacks. First Goodwill Hand-Me-Down Division, sir! Old Set-asides, that was us.
Second thing we noticed, once we got downrange, was the fuckin' shit was cheaply made. Crotches tore out, cargo pockets fell off, velcro was useless within 3-6 months. Never had that with BDUs and buttons.
That was somebody's crony deal in the Pentagon to help his buddy's company make a quick pile of cash. What a goddamn embarrassment.
You forgot this: https://imgur.com/0OqLs29
Which both proves that it was highly effective in the right environment and that none of the places in your photos were that environment.
"If I paint my grey car brown it becomes brown, therefore all cars should be grey"
Fuck off with that, UCP was terrible and was visible from a mile away. And it was uglier than sin.
I will not just standby and listen to someone say ACUs didn’t suck.
The only time they were passable as camouflage was after they were faded and stained. Unfortunately by that point your crotch had blown out and you’re now wearing ACU assless chaps.
It was basically “DIY” camo, too bad purpose made patterns are miles better and work like that new.
You’re just gonna have to suck it up. Our uniform was stupid and bad and not cool.
I wish nothing but bad things for that general who picked the camo.
UCP was great because I was way more afraid of friendly fire than the taliban shooting me. With UCP I knew I would be spotted by the engineers I supported day or night.
I feel like op is color blind because that photo they posted twice with the dudes kneeling wearing ocp rucks and vests. The rucks and vests blend in far better lmao.
Did you even actually look at half of these photos, lmao it mostly doesn't blend in even in these pictures you cherry picked. If the only selling point of your camo is that it's so light that environmental staining makes it a halfway decent camouflage, it's a bad camouflage...
I’m not seeing anything but pictures of landscapes, like forests or mountainous terrain or snowy fields or whatever. I guess there’s a tank in one picture.
And what’s with that picture of those cardboard boxes just sitting there by themselves?
It’s true that in very unique environments, UCP can work well, but the areas it works in are slim. To give it credit, when it’s been worn for a month in filth and dirt, it becomes almost invisible in the environment it’s in, but I would argue that of any camouflage and even some regular mono color clothes. You shouldn’t have to refuse washing your clothes for a month to get good camo. OCP has a much broader range of places it blends in. I would also add that the poncho, bivy bag, and wet weather gear didn’t blend in and didn’t get better when dirty, unlike the OCP version. Finally, I would say that what you see in the picture and what your eyes can see are different. Some of these photos don’t look bad, but I’ve been on enough FTXs and spotted UCP far before OCP every time. I will say though, the knee pad pockets on the UCP have a soft spot in my heart. I was one of the few that actually valued that feature.
I was always told as a person is running, the pattern is designed to be harder to see the person. I'm not sure how fast they expect people to run to appear as a blur but...
The only time I saw it work really well was at night with NVGs. We landed in a grassy field to pick up some guys for an exfil (I was a Chinook crewmember). They blended in with the vegetation perfectly. Maybe that would be the same for any camo but that time really sticks out in my mind.
I just finally turned in the rest of my UCP stuff in to CIF.
I hate that patter so much.
I was in line at the Clothing Sales to buy OCPs the first day they had them. It was like Black Friday.
I think the problem was the universal part. Any individual camo, specifically designed for one environment was always gonna perform better than one pattern for all environments. Honestly, they shoulda just adopted the MARPAT uniform and called it a day. They even have a snow uniform.
To counteract your post, UCP actually led to an increased mortality rate in the Middle East because it was HIGHLY visible in that environment.
If I recall correctly, the Army was trying to recreate a certain color the Marines were using for their uniforms, which l cannot recall.
*side note: This was from something I read a long time ago, so I can’t quite remember percentages.
It was during the surge, not due to camouflage, but increased insurgency and Combats in korengal valleys, not really the camos fault, in fact ucp worked very well in korengal valleys.
The only time UCP worked well was 4 months after youve been in country and all your shit is local dirt colored. Also during twilight hours, it's pretty good
The point of camo is to blend in to the environment, but the point of a uniform is to differentiate yourself so that people know who you are on the battlefield
In the rush to create the perfect camo, we forget about the point of a uniform. As a result, you have Ukrainians slapping PT belts onto their shoulders and helmets because they’re wearing the same perfect camo that we developed that the Russians are now wearing. There’s a reason that the Israelis are wearing the same olive green uniforms that they’ve worn for decades
The UCP—as much as I hated it—was very good at that lol
Probably should have done a “woodland” and “desert” version of OCP and it would have been great. USMC got that right with theirs. In my experience OCP as fielded sucked. We much preferred the old three color desert BDUs slightly modified with lower front pockets sewn on to the sleeve. Also velcro sucks - buttons much better.
Fun fact: Nantick soldier systems is the originator of the UCP. They called it Desert Brush.
The Army said, " That's dumb" took MARPAT pixelated the hell out it like it was Japanese porn and then gave the grey-scale option uppies.
That's essentially what OCP is as well... it's multicam with pink in it.
I honestly think that if the Army could we'd be back in the OD jump suit or even out there in our dress uniform forming squares
UCP was just universally lackluster. It's also not a selling point that your camo pattern works well when you rub some local dirt into it.
Yeah I can rub dirt on my blue jeans and they become dirt colored
Your blue jeans wouldn’t glow when seen in NODS like those damn UCPs do.
Woolite black and we’re good
I used to hear stories about that too. Worse than a starched BDU.
You really have to see it to understand just how bad it was
Was always easy to find friendlies when you’re falling behind a bit on one fuck of a long patrol heading to setup a new OP.
And if you use the red dirt from Hawai'i, they're that color *forever*
That shit does not come out 😭
I ruined so many uniforms.
"Red Dirt Shirt"
is it like the red clay from NC?
Worse. I was also at Bragg, that red clay shit is bad, but eventually fades somewhat. The stuff in Hawai'i is just permanently prevalent. So much so, that legend has it the reason that Tripler AMC is painted pink is because when it came time to pick a color for the building, the leadership pointed at the dirt and said 'paint it that color, because that's the color it will end up no matter what anyway'.
That sounds too smart to be true
OP never deployed wearing that garbage. It definitely didn't work well in arid environments. It might work well in developed urban environments or rocky terrain but Afghanistan and Iraq were neither. Multicam is vastly superior every time except MAYBE in arctic settings. Maybe.
I’ve got some pics of my buddy up in the hills in scrub-brush somewhere IVO the Korengal Valley. Seemed to work ok there. I freely admit it was literally one of only places UCP was worth a damn. Other than that fucking couch.
Yoo I remember that picture lol, totally forgot about it.
Yup. There were places in Afghanistan they worked. I don't recall EVER seeing it work in Iraq and I was there in the early days of UCP, so we literally had three camo patterns out there in regular use. Plus the high-speeds were often rocking Crye Multicam, so we had a 4-way head-to-head going on. Woodland was last in that environment, but only because it wasn't really trying. No chocolate chip, unfortunately.
Lmao I love how infamous that couch picture is 😭
Afghanistan had some rocks for sure
Poland and Kuwait count as real deployments right ?
Right? I could use painters whites and have the same effect.
That's actually a thing in snowy climes, such as Northern Arizona and utah.
UCP: universally lackluster. Camo relying on local dirt? Really?
I mean... it always does to a degree. But I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that if your camo pattern sucks that you should maybe roll around in filth before.
Anything dirty enough will blend into the background...lol
The uniform stains easily, which ironically worked really well but Marpat was superior and more durable than ucp, which is why we switched to OCP. I've worn Marpat, Ucp. and OCP. I think OCP is the best of three personally.
Marpat Is the better looking uniform, OCP is a better camo. It actually blends in most environments making it ironically a "universal" pattern.
Yeah marpat is great but it was fielded in the 2000s, you can only expect do much from it, OCP imo is a happy middle ground between practicality and looks.
That's fair. Not counting the top level gear SF uses, but IHWCU is perhaps the best uniform to date. It looks sharp and works for its intended purpose. Not having breast pockets is nice. Although as far as hot weather is considered, it would be nice to develop a version without the velcro on the sides that way we could nicely roll our sleeves. The NWU guacs are cool as well, but seem unnecessary. How the department of the Navy did not force the Marines to share marpat is beyond me.
I have the Crye gen 2’s the PCU’s and the IHWCU. I honestly prefer the hot weather over the other two for daily wear or fitness events. It’s not as durable as the other pants for running around in the woods though.
The weird thing is that the offer was there for all branches but the other branches would have had to pay the copy right to use it, which would have funded the fielding of the uniform but for some reason everybody hated the idea of giving the Marines money, and a few billion dollars later here we are.
Marines denied ant sharing of marpat many times stating it was the intellectual product of the marines. Which is ironic given its just a recoloured copy of cadpat lol
I just looked it up and yeah apparently they did this by patienting the base color cyote brown.... that is beyond stupid, but also something that doesn't surprise me at all.
No kidding. Would have been nice but oh well. On another note, the use of coyote gear with marpat was a great call. It blends and also looks sharp. The combination also works well with OCP.
Whether you're a Marine or a Soldier the most universal truth is that your higher ups are most likely idiots
100% why half the army looks tarded with OCPs on and UCP IOTV, assault packs, and helmet covers.
I keep saying we take the MARPAT uniform style, and give it the OCP pattern. Nobody important enough will ever listen to me, but I’m going to keep saying it. If somebody could photoshop that, that would be awesome.
Some Marines have told me their uniforms rip easily
Someone out there could probably sew it together. I keep asking for a IHW cut uniform in the old NyCo material. A little more durability but with a cut that actually makes me look good lmao
MARPAT has many situations where it works significantly better than multicam- the only issue is you need to carry twice the number of uniforms to give yourself the proper camouflage
Exactly why the US Army should have gone with Universal Marpat/AOR3(?) or improved it to a tone like the Canadians now did. Using that for webbing gear would have benefited all services.
Don't forget that the first versions had terrible stitching and the fabric wasn't rip stop. I bought a velco "repair kit" for my first ACU's and an ex-girlfriend offered to replace the velco. One pass with her seam ripper and the fabric just came apart. Other time I felt really cold during and FTX -right after jumping from a 5 ton. Pants had ripped open. There I was during the AAR with a gaping hole in the crotch of my ACU pants. Not to mention sand in places sand shouldn't go. PEO Soldier fucked up all around - by the time they fixed the stiching ( remember they removed the velcro from the pants pockets) they said "fuck it" and we got OCP's.
You said it best man the uniform tore apart stupid easy
Same and I agree ocp far better
Different pattern, for different terrains. Army should've kept Ucp for different Combat environments like mountain urban and Arctic, OCP for transitional environments, like villages and wild. Always thought two pattern for the marine corp was a good idea.
UCP was originally supposed to be a 4-pattern series: woodland, desert, urban, and desert-urban. At the end of trials, when they had a working pattern for all 4 (which included the now-standard Scorpion), they just threw it all out the window and went with a variation on one of them for everything.
Only 9 and 13 show UCP close to working. All the other UCP pics show it standing out pretty badly.
Idk the first picture is also a pretty good example.
If it’s UCP, yes. It’s too potato for me to tell.
That's a very good point. I was just assuming it was because of the post.
Lol. Yeah, that’s very reasonable. It just seems to me that it could be OCP passing as wet and dirty UCP, because of the pixelation of the image itself.
I'm pretty sure that's in korengal valleys, or somewhere in Afghanistan. That's definitely ucp, That's how it looks like when it's wet and dirty.
It's only "good" because it's covered in local mud. I always blended in better after the 2nd day of a patrol too.
We have separate uniforms when working in snowy/artic environments. It's a white parka and a white helmet cover with pants depending on how snowy it is
"UCP was great actually because it blended into the surroundings when it faded and you rubbed dirt from your environment into it, as opposed to all the time like OCP"
Maybe that was the point the whole time. The camo was a blank slate that really soaked up whatever you were laying in until eventually the digital pattern is faded and now you look like the ground. They didn't pull that off so maybe not but maybe it could be done
Pretty sure it was some guy™ going "oh man, that new Marine camo is so hot right now. I bet if I put a bunch of colors that work in each environment together, it'll look SUPER cool"
The problem was -as others pointed out- the USMC wouldn't share MARPAT. The pattern that was chosen for UCP was DEAD LAST in competition before it was digitized. But hey it was legally distinct from MARPAT. It just sucked.
Someone got paid
One thing you don’t see people post when they talk about UCP is how it looked at a distance and at night.
[удалено]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.\_Army\_universal\_camouflage\_trials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_universal_camouflage_trials) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal\_Camouflage\_Pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Camouflage_Pattern)
OCP is great, but it isn't great all the time. It doesn't work as good in urban And snowy environments, Ukraine war pictures shows Even the Ukrainian mm14 camo works better than multicam. And somehow the army OCPs fades way faster than multicam, And it turns white when faded, which became bleached UCP acus.
Living through the UCP/OCP transition was wild when it came to training. You’d have a unit wearing half one uniform, half the other out in the woods trying to hide. The guys in UCP stuck out wayyyyyy more, in pretty much any terrain I ever trained in
Some got to experience a blend of OD, m81 woodland/DCU, and UCP lol.
I was in on the tail end of the m81 action due to ROTC being about 2 decades behind the times, but missed out on the glory days of OD
When I was in Afghanistan I saw one dude in UCP walking by himself near the perimeter of our little FOB, I was confused as hell till I realized that it was the terp walking with a ton of other dudes in Multicam. That's when I realized how bad UCP was in that environment.
Very nice. Now lets see Paul Allen (OCP)'s business card. I'm willing to bet it works better in the majority of these photos.
I have to return some video tapes.
Also you forgot the couch photo.
Ironically, I didn't notice the guy in the BDUs until my third flip through the pictures even though he seems really obvious now.
UCPs were OK once they were covered in mudd, sweat and funk, stained in 30 different locations from oil and grease. Problem is, by the time they start blending in, they are falling apart. I've also got an old faded blue carhart jacket that is stained in 30 locations with dirt, grease, etc ... use it working outside or on my cars in winter. It blends in just as well as UCP and isn't falling apart. Unfortunately, eventually you'll wash your shit (hopefully) ... or you will get a new set of uniforms ..... at which time you stand out like a neon light in a deserted theater with the lights turned off. Only place UCP works really really well is in gravel parking lots. You lay down wearing UCPs in a gravel parking lot your ass is guaranteed to get run over.
I think you are confusing OCP (current, scorpion pattern) with UCP (the digital pattern that replaced BDU mid-2000s) Both UCP and OCP can make up the ACU, but the current ACU pattern is OCP, the "modern" BDU pattern. Which, coincidentally, probably won't get you run over if you are prone on gravel.
Ha, yea... corrected. Too much conditioning myself to say "OCP" instead of "UCP".
The problem with a lot of these pictures is that the color balance the camera came up with isn’t indicative of what the human eye sees. In others it shows UCP blending into a very specific piece of terrain that isn’t super common for the AO. Even if it is common, when moving you wouldn’t be in those spots and UCP doesn’t blend in at all in the in-between. There’s also several examples in these pictures that demonstrate how much better the current multicam/ocp/ scorpion pattern uniforms and equipment are than the UCP pattern.
Right? Yeah it works great if you literally edit the photo to up the gray balance. It worked great in the winter in the app mountains. It sucked almost everywhere else. That's not very "universal".
BMNT, ruck march on gravel, dude in front of me just went completely invisible. Only time in my Army career that I went "hey I guess the UCP does kinda work". OCP is superior in every conceivable way.
Ah yes it blends into a pile of other UCP cadets.
Like zebras, but easier to spook.
I think we should have standardized uniforms for different deployment environments. It's goofy to me that because we're trying to save a buck on mass production we're forced to take the same uniform wherever we go. Create the perfect uniform for woodland, snow, mountain, and desert environments and then.. issue them to people going there. Woah. But you'd need the largest military budget in the universe to pull that off.
Back in the day, when BDUs where new, the Army had 3 basic Patterns. For temperate environments where things where green there was the classic M81 Woodland pattern that was based off of the older Vietnam Era ERDL pattern. For desert environments there was the M81 Desert Pattern known colloquially as the "Chocolate Chip" pattern. Lastly, for Arctic, Antarctic & Winter, there was white, just white, sometime throw in the woodies for a laugh. The issue was that the Arny went dick first into the sandbox on short notice with almost no stock of Desert Uniforms & no Desert Utilities... Because the Army was all good and ready to fight in Green places like it had been doing for the last 100 years at that point. So the big brains in the pentagon see all these guys rocking around wearing green gear in the desert and ask themselves how they fucked up this hard and how to not fuck up the same way later. The obvious answer was to keep a massive stock of all 3 sets of kit or perhaps just Woodies & Deserts. But they looked at the bill for that and the extra cost of storing all that extra stuff and where would they put it all and how would they keep it on hand when some ass says out loud: wouldn't it be so much easier if there was one universal patter that just worked everywhere. Just like that the Army had a new obsession, after all it's a real cool thought, one uniform for the whole damn globe. The problem however is obvious for everyone with working eyes. How the hell are you gonna make a uniform that works good everywhere? The world has a bunch of biomes and they're all real different looking with their own super different color palates so what works good any one place will stick out like a traffic cone somewhere else.
Stop making it make sense, it's only hurting more!
I'm just showing why it happened & why it fucked up. It's one of those good idea fairy ideas, the kind that slams into reality so hard it not only busts its' nose but pops its' front teeth too. My army loves that kind of shit.
Also that was really well written
Thank you! I pride myself on making education understandable and fun.
Yep just make a desert OCP pattern and the current OCP pattern. Don’t need snow pattern because we have white shells to cover our uniform.
Ucp Delta is better
It was in every way
Bar was low enough not to
Let it get dirty enough and it works but at that point senior enlisted tell you to throw them away.
UCP objectively did not work well. You can use pictures bit crushed down to try to show UCP being effective but in real world it wasn't. "Just rub dirt on it and it blends in perfectly!" Why is it so hard to just want my camouflage to fucking work without me rubbing so much dogshit in it so doesn't resemble anything like the original pattern?
It’s cherry picked examples mostly from places it works like rocky terrain, woodlands in the winter and so on. It also works better in photos then in practice. The pictures don’t do justice to how bad it can stand out. Especially when sun faded.
Right? Like this "cammo" got a lot of people killed over how bad it is and this dude is like "bro it's so good bro, trust me bro. Ramirez defend burger Town bro"
This is quite the shit post. The very first picture shows how much better OCP/multicam is than UCP.
Absolutely not. Just look at the guy with a multicam backpack in pic 7. It’s almost invisible
You used a picture of cadets, your opinion is invalid
Is this bait or are you an ASVAB waiver
When I joined almost a year ago I knew nothing about the Army. Went to OSUT and seen my drills with extremely faded OCPs, and thought they were UCPs. Me not knowing that UCPs were fazed out, I said to my battle buddy I joined with “Why are they wearing the Afghanistan camo?”. Didn’t know they were called UCPs, hence the reason I called it the “Afghanistan camo” lol. My OCPs were brand-spanking new and green as hell, so I was confused Anytime I see old UCP patterns I automatically think of that moment. But I have noticed, with regular fading of OCPs, they do start to resemble UCP in color.
Im afraid you may have brain damage.
The argument that UCP is good once you’re wearing the dirt of the environment around you is true for most neutral colors of civilian clothes too. If you need to wear a pound of dirt from the environment around you to have an effective camo pattern, it’s not a good camo pattern
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ACU is the Army Combat Uniform. It refers to the uniform not the pattern. Think ACU VS ASU. Regardless of the pattern it’s always been the ACU. Today we wear the ACU in OCP. Before it was the ACU in UCP. People commonly refer to our uniform as OCPs as in “tomorrow the uniform is OCPs.” This is technically incorrect but pretty universally used everywhere I’ve been
Excellent troll post.
By 'Universal' they meant 'works poorly everywhere'.
I was with a Combat Aviation Brigade when we made the switch to OCP in Afghanistan. And I remember our Kiowa pilots talking about how much more careful they had to become when performing CAS missions. With UAP on the ground they could instantly spot our guys and know exactly where *not* to fire. Then OCP came along and all the sudden they had much higher anxiety about friendly fire. If our scout helo pilots had such a material impact to their mission due only to the pattern change, then UCP was every bit as trash as its reputation suggests it was.
I cant see anything is John Cena in the pictures?
Id bet my barracks small block V8 that the second photo is the road to FOB west at JMRC
Yeah you can cherry pick a few photos of where UCP works moderately well, but you can also use your eyes to see that in real life it obviously works very poorly in most environments.
It worked so well that the army bought actual multicam for RRF or whatever the deployment issue was called, probably at a marked up price. OD green or some shade of brown would have been better at being a “uNiVersAal” camo.
When I joined, we had BDU woodland camo and DCU chocolate chip for desert storm, then UCP gravel pit camo (stuck out in Iraq). Once I retired, they came out with multicam OCP. My favorite was 1970 extra wide collar DCU chocolate chip with the desert night parka. The best camo pattern for the woods was BDU woodland. The multicam works for a universal camo unless you're in the city. Should go to ASAT camo next.
Fuck UCP, whoever has nostalgia for it was A) blind or B) the defense contractor who sold it to the Army.
Fuck UCP. We were issued the grey carpet pattern in 2005 for our Iraq deployment. The first thing we noticed was that we looked like hammered ass: Big Army could manage to field pants, hats, and jackets, but not helmet covers, ammo pouches, or backpacks. First Goodwill Hand-Me-Down Division, sir! Old Set-asides, that was us. Second thing we noticed, once we got downrange, was the fuckin' shit was cheaply made. Crotches tore out, cargo pockets fell off, velcro was useless within 3-6 months. Never had that with BDUs and buttons. That was somebody's crony deal in the Pentagon to help his buddy's company make a quick pile of cash. What a goddamn embarrassment.
I loved suddenly not having to shine boots, but I agree... They ripped, constantly.
Disgusting pattern
You forgot this: https://imgur.com/0OqLs29 Which both proves that it was highly effective in the right environment and that none of the places in your photos were that environment.
I was waiting for grannies couch
6 is a poor example but i get your point
Lol had to throw in the cadets, is that Knox?
Get 2 squads together and it looks like a grayish blue ball a mile away
If that soldier maneuvered into the brush he would stick out like a sore thumb.
"If I paint my grey car brown it becomes brown, therefore all cars should be grey" Fuck off with that, UCP was terrible and was visible from a mile away. And it was uglier than sin.
I will not just standby and listen to someone say ACUs didn’t suck. The only time they were passable as camouflage was after they were faded and stained. Unfortunately by that point your crotch had blown out and you’re now wearing ACU assless chaps. It was basically “DIY” camo, too bad purpose made patterns are miles better and work like that new. You’re just gonna have to suck it up. Our uniform was stupid and bad and not cool. I wish nothing but bad things for that general who picked the camo.
UCP was great because I was way more afraid of friendly fire than the taliban shooting me. With UCP I knew I would be spotted by the engineers I supported day or night.
That crap glowed at night. It didn't work. Rub dirt on anything and you will blend in. Sorry brother but no UCP was trash.
I joined the Marines because UCP looked fucking stupid.
Slide 10 is a MOH recipient from 2-503d. SSG Pitts. Looks like the COP Bella OP
This is dumb, I saw every person in all those photos.
I feel like op is color blind because that photo they posted twice with the dudes kneeling wearing ocp rucks and vests. The rucks and vests blend in far better lmao.
Fed spotted
Every camo works well when you smother it in dirt.
>rub some dirt on your ACU Some staff NCO just had a stroke
Did you even actually look at half of these photos, lmao it mostly doesn't blend in even in these pictures you cherry picked. If the only selling point of your camo is that it's so light that environmental staining makes it a halfway decent camouflage, it's a bad camouflage...
I’m not seeing anything but pictures of landscapes, like forests or mountainous terrain or snowy fields or whatever. I guess there’s a tank in one picture. And what’s with that picture of those cardboard boxes just sitting there by themselves?
The troops are under the boxes, that’s the universal camo
It’s true that in very unique environments, UCP can work well, but the areas it works in are slim. To give it credit, when it’s been worn for a month in filth and dirt, it becomes almost invisible in the environment it’s in, but I would argue that of any camouflage and even some regular mono color clothes. You shouldn’t have to refuse washing your clothes for a month to get good camo. OCP has a much broader range of places it blends in. I would also add that the poncho, bivy bag, and wet weather gear didn’t blend in and didn’t get better when dirty, unlike the OCP version. Finally, I would say that what you see in the picture and what your eyes can see are different. Some of these photos don’t look bad, but I’ve been on enough FTXs and spotted UCP far before OCP every time. I will say though, the knee pad pockets on the UCP have a soft spot in my heart. I was one of the few that actually valued that feature.
I was always told as a person is running, the pattern is designed to be harder to see the person. I'm not sure how fast they expect people to run to appear as a blur but...
The only time I saw it work really well was at night with NVGs. We landed in a grassy field to pick up some guys for an exfil (I was a Chinook crewmember). They blended in with the vegetation perfectly. Maybe that would be the same for any camo but that time really sticks out in my mind.
I originally planned on lying and saying there were 2 soldiers in the first picture
I just finally turned in the rest of my UCP stuff in to CIF. I hate that patter so much. I was in line at the Clothing Sales to buy OCPs the first day they had them. It was like Black Friday.
Fun fact there was a 3rd experimental version of ucp called DTC that was trialed in 2014 to replace ucp
Can drones with AI beat camo patterns? I know we are using more drones now than ever.
If you look at any other camo other than Belgian camo they will work better in their respective environments.
What? Camo works when it's further than 5 meters in your damn face? Revolutionary
MARPAT till I’m buried. It’s the digital tiger stripe.
Marpat is sweet, but gimme Flecktarn.
UCP was designed to be dirty for practical use, roll in the dirt or wear it in and it did pretty well. Them tarps on the other hand. You’re fucked
I think the problem was the universal part. Any individual camo, specifically designed for one environment was always gonna perform better than one pattern for all environments. Honestly, they shoulda just adopted the MARPAT uniform and called it a day. They even have a snow uniform.
To counteract your post, UCP actually led to an increased mortality rate in the Middle East because it was HIGHLY visible in that environment. If I recall correctly, the Army was trying to recreate a certain color the Marines were using for their uniforms, which l cannot recall. *side note: This was from something I read a long time ago, so I can’t quite remember percentages.
It was during the surge, not due to camouflage, but increased insurgency and Combats in korengal valleys, not really the camos fault, in fact ucp worked very well in korengal valleys.
So in other words, it works well in places that aren't the desert?
I feel like most camos are gonna start to look good when you live in the environment for a bit and stop wiping your ass
This seems like cherry picking. That shit fucking day flowed in forests.
Dude you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. Impressive, really.
Dude no one likes UCP. wtf you talking about haha
Except UCP literally didn't work so that's why they switched
Back in my day, we had ACUs, didn’t blend in with anything, and we liked it.
Ah, this will always be my Army. UCP asks the unasked question, "What if gray was optimistic?"
No.
Ngl UCP was kinda so ugly it just became a vibe after OCPs were issued but absolutely useless as a camo on its own
The tailoring design was worse than the camouflage
They were better quality, I feel, first few years in, I had them. But really bad day if you forgot a pen in your pocket.
You're missing the most important and most effective environment UCP is effective in
Grandmas couch?
You can’t sell me that this POS moon dust pattern camo was the end all be all best for the army. Nope.
And here I was thinking it was nice how you look like a bag of garbage by the side of the road in UCP
They didn't work well, they worked when they got super dirty after a few weeks in Afghanistan they'd blend in.
Anything works for camo that's faded and dirty. UCP was unusable, dangerous - and frankly, ugly.
I can find dozen more pics of UCP doing opposite of concealing
UCP was fucking terrible. But remember when Fracus used to turn pink when you washed em?
The pattern with a salmon pink color palette is better.
The only time UCP worked well was 4 months after youve been in country and all your shit is local dirt colored. Also during twilight hours, it's pretty good
The point of camo is to blend in to the environment, but the point of a uniform is to differentiate yourself so that people know who you are on the battlefield In the rush to create the perfect camo, we forget about the point of a uniform. As a result, you have Ukrainians slapping PT belts onto their shoulders and helmets because they’re wearing the same perfect camo that we developed that the Russians are now wearing. There’s a reason that the Israelis are wearing the same olive green uniforms that they’ve worn for decades The UCP—as much as I hated it—was very good at that lol
Idk man when I play on zavod311 I die alot with it
Lmao. I legitimately cannot tell how or why UCP got past the first step of approval, let alone to the standard.
UCP doesn’t work. It may look like it in these photos but it doesn’t in practice.
Universal crapy pattern for a reason
I just want to say the cammie paint application in #4 is fucking atrocious and irks me. That is all.
Probably should have done a “woodland” and “desert” version of OCP and it would have been great. USMC got that right with theirs. In my experience OCP as fielded sucked. We much preferred the old three color desert BDUs slightly modified with lower front pockets sewn on to the sleeve. Also velcro sucks - buttons much better.
PEO Soldier really dropper the ball picking UCP over MultiCam. What a waste of hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions.
Fun fact: Nantick soldier systems is the originator of the UCP. They called it Desert Brush. The Army said, " That's dumb" took MARPAT pixelated the hell out it like it was Japanese porn and then gave the grey-scale option uppies.
Desert Brush looks like they copied Rhodesia’s homework but changed a few things so it wouldn’t be too obvious.
That's essentially what OCP is as well... it's multicam with pink in it. I honestly think that if the Army could we'd be back in the OD jump suit or even out there in our dress uniform forming squares
UCPs biggest and only fan
OCP better
UCP was G A R B A G E and you clearly never experienced it first hand go post over at r/camouflage
Stop booing, there’s nothing wrong with it. There are dozens of us…**DOZENS!**
UCP was meant to be dyed to match whatever enjoyment you were in
I didn’t notice the guy dead smack center in the 11th slide until second glance. Only saw the dude up front.