In yet another sign that Caleb Crye and his team are taking over the world, it turns out the Australian army is following in its British brethren's footsteps and contracted with Crye Precision to field a new camo pattern for the ADF.
Our friends at Soldier Systems had the scoop first...
"We have just in the last week negotiated an arrangement with the Crye company for them to design an Australian version of their pattern in the various materials," Dr. Stephen Gumley, ADF chief of materiel, told a Senate estimate committee.Brigadier Mike Phelps, director-general of integrated soldier systems, said contracts had been signed with Crye earlier this month, paying $US4.7 million for licences to manufacture in Australia and $US3.1 million for Crye to develop a uniquely Australian camouflage pattern.
"The multicam pattern is a proven pattern. It works in-theatre," he said. "The US use it, the UK use their own unique variant."
We reported last year that the ADF had decided to outfit all its forces in Afghanistan with Crye combat uniforms in MultiCam after their defense officials deemed the uniform and pattern so successful in tests with Australian SAS troops. We also updated our readers on some snafus in ordering sizes for the SAS units, but Crye told us the orders for the overall force were right on.
It now seems that the ADF is so confident in Crye's workthat they're jumping on the bandwagon and joining the Brits in their pursuit of a Crye-designed camo pattern. But it is still unclear to me which pattern this Crye design will replace...the desert Auscam or jungle (which they seem pretty satisfied with) -- or will it be a third pattern?
It is also interesting to see how this might affect the Army's pursuit of a camo pattern family. With Crye inking these high profile deals with major NATO allies, does it push their pattern further into the Army's lap, or does it potentially take MultiCam (or a variant thereof) out of the running?
