According to PEO Soldier, the Natick Labs entry is no longer being considered in the Army’s Phase IV camouflage program.
This is a very interesting development since it eviscerates the argument I’ve heard from industry that the Army is only performing Phase IV to find the lowest-cost alternative to its current arrangement with Crye Precision. If this were the case, then a government-developed and -owned pattern would have certainly saved the Army from buying a technical data package or paying royalties.
This leaves the entries from Crye Precision, Brookwood, ADS and Kryptek in the running.
From PEO Soldier’s spokesperson Debi Dawson:
“On Jan. 10th, the Army announced that families of camouflage patterns from one government team and four commercial vendors were selected to proceed into the next step of evaluations.
“As part of a cost savings strategy and as a result of initial assessments, the government submission is being removed from further consideration as a replacement to the universal camouflage pattern.
“This decision has been made in light of the similarity between elements of the government and one industry submission and the higher score of the industry submission during the initial evaluation.
“We are excited about the four vendor patterns we are going forward with. We anticipate experiencing very positive results in our field trials and more advanced computer evaluations. We will continue to work closely with our industry partners and our government team, especially in terms of research, development and evaluation. The Army conducts extensive testing to ensure we provide Soldiers with the very best clothing and equipment.”
