The U.S. Army has altered its government-owned Scorpion camouflage pattern to look almost identical to MultiCam, the trademarked pattern the service has been using in Afghanistan since 2010.
Earlier this spring, Army leaders began briefing senior sergeants major around the service that the Universal Camouflage Pattern will be replaced with Scorpion, a pattern similar to MultiCam that was developed around 2002 for the Objective Force Warrior program.
The Army has spent the past five years immersed in testing as part of its camouflage improvement effort to replace the UCP, a pixilated pattern that has proven to be inferior when compared to other patterns.
Army officials wanted to replace UCP with Crye Precision’s MultiCam — a pattern that has demonstrated consistent performance in multiple tests and was selected in 2010 as the Operational Camouflage Pattern, or OCP, for soldiers to wear in Afghanistan. But problems emerged with price negotiations and the Army decided to go with Scorpion, which was actually designed by Crye Precision under a government contract.
The company’s owner, Caleb Crye, then improved the pattern, making it more effective and trademarked it as MultiCam.
