Army taps Scorpion pattern to replace highly criticized Universal Camouflage Pattern

68 best shots of military tech in action

Last year we brought you our picks of the 100 best images of the military in action, highlighting the technology that the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines deal with every day. And the advances keep coming. Here are 68 of the greatest action shots.

The U.S. Army is going to dust off its old Scorpion pattern as a replacement for its much criticized Universal Camouflage Pattern.

Sgt. Major of the Army Raymond Chandler III is quietly telling all of the senior sergeant majors around the Army that the service’s new camouflage will be Scorpion — a pattern similar to MuliCam that was developed for the Objective Force Warrior program in 2002, Military.com reports.

The Army has been considering replacing UCP with Crye Precision’s MultiCam — a pattern that has demonstrated consistent performance in multiple tests and was selected in 2010 for soldiers to wear in Afghanistan.

But Army officials balked at MultiCam’s price tag. They didn’t want to pay for “printing fees” the company receives on MultiCam — a small figure that amounts to about one percent of the 20-percent price hike uniform companies want to charge the Army for MultiCam, according to Caleb Crye, the owner of CP.

Army officials even tried to buy the rights to MultiCam. Crye told the Army it would cost $25 million if the service wanted to buy the rights to the pattern, which would essentially put Crye Precision out of business, he said.

So with that option off the table, the Army is now going to use Scorpion since the service has owned it for the past 12 years. The pattern is very similar to MultiCam because Crye developed for the OFW program.

MuliCam’s appearance is slightly different for trademark purposes.

There are images and a few swatches floating around the web, but it’s hard to tell what Scorpion will look like until its rolled out officially. And there’s no telling when that will be.

Click here to see the swatches of both patterns.