Yes we will. Scheduled for later this year according to Coy Cdrs conference minutes. This may slip due to ACF issue issues.
However Lympstone follow the guidelines of the admiralty, not CGS, and so the RM tuck PCS shirts in, and roll up sleeves in order to not look like a shower of…poop. There’s fuel for another long, petty and ultimately pointless discussion. I’ll leave it with you…[/quote]
Air Force are tucked in when not on deployment. Saw a chap at Daedalus rolled up as well the other day.
[quote=“wilf_san” post=5190]I just wondered if there might have been a snow/splinter version of MTP (yes, I know, ‘multi’, but…)
I’ve always thought the arctic whites are only effective against deep/clean snow…some splinter camoflague would be better…like the ‘dazzle ships’ scheme
[/quote]
Yes, I thought that the UK might have had a winter version of MTP, similar to the digicam ABU these USAF Officer Cadets are wearing:
[attachment=44]usafa2016.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=45]usafa2016snow.jpg[/attachment]
(really makes them start to merge into the snowy background)
Apparently the instructors at USAFA are very quiet, and hardly ever have to raise their voices…
[attachment=46]usafa2016instr.jpg[/attachment]
(all above pictures are of Officer Candidates from Graduation Class 2016 at the USAF Academy …I’m impressed by their training regime, and by the team lumber-trunks…
)
wilf_san
Good to see that the Hat, Dangerous Brian lives on in MTP!
Always nice to see what you should’ve been issued… :blink:
[quote=“wilf_san” post=5196][quote=“wilf_san” post=5190]I just wondered if there might have been a snow/splinter version of MTP (yes, I know, ‘multi’, but…)
I’ve always thought the arctic whites are only effective against deep/clean snow…some splinter camoflague would be better…like the ‘dazzle ships’ scheme
[/quote]
Yes, I thought that the UK might have had a winter version of MTP, similar to the digicam ABU these USAF Officer Cadets are wearing:
[attachment=44]usafa2016.jpg[/attachment]
[attachment=45]usafa2016snow.jpg[/attachment]
(really makes them start to merge into the snowy background)
wilf_san[/quote]
unless this is a wah (in which case wah shield up) but they dont have a winter camo pattern. The pictures are showing the exact same uniform. As far as i am aware US Army/USAF wear white over suits (same as uk) only the USMC have a dedicated snow camo based on their digi cam
Yes, but what I’m saying is that arguably their now-standard digicam ABUs are actually better for concealment in snowy conditions than our British (so-called Multi) Terrain Pattern camouflage.
USAF ABU
UK MTP/CRYE (Derived from Multicam)
wilf_san
ps
What? The ECWs, or the standard peaked field variety? And who’s Dangerous Brian? Or is he no longer with us? I had a DPM modern-issue ECW cap, until somebody decided I was no longer a suitable parent, and ‘adopted’ it off me…I’ve also got a proper '82 pattern one, lurking somewhere. That’s the trouble with losing camouflaged items of clothing…are they more difficult to find, when searched for? Because if not, they’ve failed… :blink:
Though, it’s basically the same colours (just more blue) as the US Army ACU which may also be good in snow but are apparently worse everywhere else. Hence their nickname “ICU” (I see you).
The last I heared the plan was for the US Army to ditch the ACU and do what we’ve done; go for multicam or their own version of it.
Since the ABU is mainly just a different pattern (digital tiger stripe) I can’t imagine it’s any better performing than the ACU.
Then of course there’s the US Navy digital camo…which I’m certain would be EPIC when hiding against the backdrop of a night-time scene in an Atari 2600 game.
Some US Army were wearing MPT in Nijmegen in 2012.
[quote=“wilf_san” post=5200]Yes, but what I’m saying is that arguably their now-standard digicam ABUs are actually better for concealment in snowy conditions than our British (so-called Multi) Terrain Pattern camouflage.
USAF ABU
UK MTP/CRYE (Derived from Multicam)
wilf_san
ps
What? The ECWs, or the standard peaked field variety? And who’s Dangerous Brian? Or is he no longer with us? I had a DPM modern-issue ECW cap, until somebody decided I was no longer a suitable parent, and ‘adopted’ it off me…I’ve also got a proper '82 pattern one, lurking somewhere. That’s the trouble with losing camouflaged items of clothing…are they more difficult to find, when searched for? Because if not, they’ve failed… :blink:[/quote]
MTP works a lot better in snow than DPM…see my comment about personal fieldcraft skills/no uniform being an invisibility cloak above…
As to ABU, did you know it was specifically designed to look like a camouflage pattern without actually being one? The whole camouflage uniform thing in the USA post 2001 has just been very, very silly.
should see some of the AOR patterns they are researching (again) and against Multicam which they now have in service called…wait for it…
OEFCP!!!
[quote=“tango_lima” post=5217]
As to ABU, did you know it was specifically designed to look like a camouflage pattern without actually being one?[/quote]
Hold on?! How does that work out? Surely if it was designed to look like a camouflage pattern, and it looks like a camouflage pattern, then it is one?? This camo story makes no sense.
[quote=“tango_lima” post=5217]
The whole camouflage uniform thing in the USA post 2001 has just been very, very silly.[/quote]
Just exactly…and I saw a mention of the financial write-offs that the US DoD have had to accept, did I read somewhere $5bn??
[quote=“duty_pongo”]should see some of the AOR patterns they are researching (again) and against Multicam which they now have in service called…wait for it…
OEFCP!!! [/quote]
And wouldn’t you have expected a Universal Camouflage Pattern to have included it’s use within OP Enduring Freedom?? Does that place the operation outwith the normal universe? Unreal…I often am totally amazed by UORs, they seem to get slapped-in regardless of whatever’s been planned/provided already (what I mean is that filling a procurement gap is one thing, but when it’s acting as a replacement for an almost-new disfunctional paid-for service/system etc, it just seems to be accepted.
And modern camo schemes: let’s be realistic.
Multicam
Multicam vs MTP…
[attachment=47]multicamvsmtp.JPG[/attachment]
[url=http://www.thistribe.com/multicam-vs-mtp][quote=“ThisTribe.com is for sale | HugeDomains”]Multicam
Multicam is a 6 colour camouflage pattern, optimised in the arid scrub and urban colour sets but which performs well across the whole spectrum, out to desert at one end and woodland at the other. The pattern is also designed to work at varying light levels. The design is owned, and all Multicam fabric manufactured by the US company Crye Precision LLC.
MTP
MTP is the version of Multicam developed for the British Armed Forces. It uses the same colours and proportions, although the coloured shapes are more elongated and also some have the spotted edges of some shapes in DPM. To quote the Defence Science and Technology Lab “in a pattern that had clear echoes of the well-known British ‘splash’ pattern”. MTP is not available to commercial equipment manufacturers except when producing equipment for the MoD.
Practicalities
Appearance
Over smaller areas the two camouflage patterns look similar and use the same colours, so equipment such as webbing and daysacks and smaller clothing such as hats will not be noticeably different and will not normally offend the Chain of Command when worn together with an MTP uniform. Larger areas and clothing will however stand out. Also manufacturing contracts vary and colours will inevitably change a bit – if your uniform trousers are a bit different from your shirt, but both are MTP then you’re covered. If the cause is because one is Multicam and the other MTP then you may have problems.
Performance
There are no reported differences in the performance of MTP and Multicam. (my bold)
IR Reflectivity
All genuine Multicam equipment and clothing is treated for appropriate IR reflectivity, unless called “Multicam VS” (Visible Spectrum). This is used to describe some prints and non-standard Multicam fabrics that won’t allow IRR tuning.
Other Patterns
Other multiple-terrain camoflage patterns include the US Army’s UCP (Universal Camoflage Pattern) or “Digicam”, the Australian DPCU and Polish Pantera. All of these have been issued to troops in Afghanistan. [/quote][/url]
There are no reported differences in the performance of MTP and Multicam.…so why was MTP developed? And I was unaware that MTP is Multicam modified to include British ‘DPM splash shapes’…so does that mean that classic US BDU ‘woodland’ differed from classic UK ‘woodland’ DPM to the same so-called splash shape extent? Weird.
wilf_san
I was under the impression MTP was developed for copyright reasons. The MOD owns the pattern, so can make money licensing it out to companies such as Webtex, arctis, etc who produce private equipment.
I think it was just to give the UK a UK specific pattern again, since every man and his dog had copied DPM, while still looking vaguely related to DPM and therefore British.
Yes! Haha!
[quote]Hold on?! How does that work out? Surely if it was designed to look like a camouflage pattern, and it looks like a camouflage pattern, then it is one?? This camo story makes no sense.
[/quote]
A statement from the people who designed the ABU, apologising to the Airmen of the US Air Force for how rubbish the camouflage is:
http://www.tigerstripeproducts.com/airforcetiger.htm
Key bit:
[quote]The ragged edges surrounding the solid areas do little for the visual break up of the pattern elements.
The key to a good digital camo effective pattern is that visual break up is achieved at near and far distances. Very little break up is achieved here but it’s not really required for a simple barracks work uniform. This pattern and colorway are mainly for show.
Numerous more advanced pixilated tiger patterns, for real world applications, were recommended but all were rejected.[/quote]
This is correct. Despite being used by other countries, the DPM pattern is widely recognised as bring ‘British’. The MOD wanted to retain this Britishness with the new pattern so they took multicam and changed it into MTP.
[quote=“talon” post=5228][quote=“tango_lima” post=5227]
I think it was just to give the UK a UK specific pattern again, since every man and his dog had copied DPM, while still looking vaguely related to DPM and therefore British.
[/quote]
This is correct. Despite being used by other countries, the DPM pattern is widely recognised as bring ‘British’. The MOD wanted to retain this Britishness with the new pattern so they took multicam and changed it into MTP.[/quote]
So we can look British (‘splash’ shapes) and like 21st Century good guys (Multicam) while not being mistaken for the Romanians (DPM - both woodland and desert now).
Somebody once told me that there were some problems with IFF when British troops were working alongside Aussies in Timor Leste, because the Indonesians use DPM. In the end they had to slap massive UJs on the arms of the Brit peacekeepers (especially the Gurkhas).
MTP works pretty well in ‘mixed’ snowy conditions - pretty much anything that isn’t the Arctic in winter - i’ve seen it in UK winter conditions in the Highlands, Dartmoor, Wales etc… and it was fine (and far, far better than DPM), as well as seeing Multicam in an Afghan winter mountain environment - lots if rock, lots of snow, not a lot of anything else.
my own view is that MTP is a very good pattern for pretty much any environment that isn’t very,very green - so when the ATC finally sorts itself out people are going to stick out like a sore thumb on the school playing field, but when they go to Sennybridge, or Thetford, or Warcop, or Catterick, or Oakhampton, they’ll fit in, both summer and winter, and do so better than if they were wearing woodland DPM.
Just to clarify: CCF(RAF) won’t be (for now) wearing MTP. Like the ATC we’ve been specifically banned; and RAF sections will be receiving surplus CS95 stock ‘officially’ from CCF(Army) instead of unofficially like in the past.
What I don’t understand - does anyone? - is why the BAN on wearing MTP. If I am silly enough as a VR(T) to spend my own money on it, why not? It seems to be being used specifically to mark us out as ‘not proper military’ (CCF TEST teams have MTP and will continue to wear it even though they are going FTRS, CTTs have been wearing it for months).
Is it Sgt Badger with a bee in his bonnet again? Where’s the order come from? It makes no sense. It will be unenforceable in 2-3 years’ time anyway so why bother?
T
My understanding from previous posts is that if you ‘spend your own money on MTP’, you are buying stolen goods as it should not be on sale to ‘the public’!
Assuming it does eventually become legal to buy or you are buying commercially available Multicam, one good reason I can think of (probably not the actual reason) is that if your cadets (and staff) do not have an official or unofficial suppy of DPM and parents have previously forked out to privately buy DPM from ‘military surplus’, they’ll be a revolt if you tell them they can no longer wear DPM and must fork out for new MTP / Multicam!
The way round this would be to allow a mix of DPM / MTP on units or even on the same person which would look pretty awful!
[quote=“Hendon Chipmunk” post=5296]The way round this would be to allow a mix of DPM / MTP on units or even on the same person which would look pretty awful![/quote]Wearing a mix on one person (except perhaps for accessories such as webbing) would not be something which I’d like to see. I’d have no real issue with different people wearing different patterns though and I would expect that it is what will need to happen if we do eventually start to migrate to PCS, much as it happens now as we move out of 90 or 94 pattern to CS95.
I recently heard that all SATTs will be getting PCS shortly.
i think its quite reasonable as a short-term holding action - if the ACO said ‘yeah, wear what you like as long as you don’t come to my door when you get lifted for buying stolen property off ebay’ then not only would the ACO start to look pretty scruffy with units/people partly in DPM and partly in MTP, but you’d also get the ‘fashion’ problem - there might well be a pressure on those with not many shekels to rub together to get MTP because those on the Sqn who have access to daddy’s credit card are fully suited up in the stuff.
what they also needed to do was come up with a plan to transition - or at least manage the transition - from DPM to MTP. DPM is going to run out at some stage, and it will happen at a reasonably predicable time given that the MOD knows what it owns, knows when it will issue the last stuff, and knows when it will sell the dregs off to the surplus industry.
there has not, to my knowledge, been a plan, or even serious consideration of a plan - what will happen is that units/individuals will start turning up to events in unservicable/ill-fitting/non-existant kit, units will have to pool their DPM’s in order to clothe an increasingly small proportion of their cadets, and the cadet experience will suffer markedly because there just won’t be enough to go around.
exercises on DTE land and shooting on MOD ranges will dribble to a halt - both require participants to be fully dressed in CS95 or MTP, and thats actually require in their standing orders - HQAC will stick its head in the sand, then blame everyone else for the problem - and because the MTP production schedule has been written in stone for the next 5 years, the parts of the ATC experience that require combat clothing (exercises, shooting, lots of RAF Helcopter/airlift flying etc…) will end and will be very difficult to reserect.
nobody will help because everybody will take the view that the ATC knew this transition was coming, but did nothing to prepare for it while everyone else did. that old saying ‘an admin error on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part’ will reign supreme.
HQAC will tell anyone who will listen that its not their fault.
