A couple IMINT hits this morning.
Unfortunately the above picture was posted online almost a year ago, but I'd never seen it and I thought in the context of the Army's adoption of MultiCam for troops in Afghanistan it was worth revisiting.
Internet speculation says that the troops pictured above are from the Russian version of Delta force, called Alpha. I've seen some traffic on the net that indicates the Russians are working on a new camo scheme that takes the MultiCam approach but makes it digital.
With the US, Spain, Great Britain and now Russia looking into their own versions of MultiCam, one wonders if we're reaching a tipping point where the basic woodland pattern has been so improved with the basic MultiCam color scheme that we're gotten pretty close to a universal pattern...or have we?
The UCP actually worked pretty well in Iraq, but by far the most coveted performer was the Marine Corps' desert digital. I feel like MultiCam would have worked on some situations (a lot of Iraqi villages are situated along stretches of fertile riverbank) but not so much in the urban fight. This is certainly an interesting time in camouflage development and we'll keep our eye on where things go as they change near daily.
I also ran across this picture of PEO Soldier that really shows how well the entire MultiCam ensemble works -- and at the same time it shows how dramatically obvious the gosh darn solid black M4 is. It sticks out like a sore thumb and with all the money being spent on MultiCam, there should really be some effort to blend in that weapon.
