Multi-Terrain Pattern
Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP) is a military camouflage pattern used by the British Army from December 2009. It was designed to replace two previous types of a camouflage that had been in use for 40 years; a four-colour "green" woodland uniform known as Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM) and a lighter "brown" desert uniform. Rather than being optimised for any particular environment, the MTP designed is intended to blend sufficiently well into all terrain types and conditions.
It is a derivative of the commercial MultiCam pattern. The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence announced that HM Forces would be issued with the new military uniform for operations in Afghanistan; initially issued to personnel deployed on Operation Herrick from March 2010, then issued more widely to HM Forces from 2011. MTP will exclusively replace woodland DPM camouflage[citation needed], with specialist desert and artic uniforms retained.
Development
The MTP camouflage design was intended to perform consistently across a wide range of environments encountered, particularly for operations that the military had been deployed during 2009.
British Troops in Afghanistan operate in a mixed landscape, including desert, woodland, mountains and urban. The development team at Dstl tested multi-terrain camouflage versus the standard army disruptive pattern material, and the desert DPM to determine the best balance of colours. The current HM Armed Forces camouflage were then tested alongside off-the-shelf multi-terrain camouflage. The tests were against terrain that soldiers are likely to encounter across the landscape in Afghanistan [1]
A wide range of camouflage colours were trialled in Britain, Cyprus, Kenya and Afghanistan[2] . Camouflages were compared with in-service and commercially available camouflages—including those from Crye Precision in the United States. The trials included visual comparisons, objective assessments of the time to detect the different camouflages against different backgrounds, and subjective user opinions on the efficacy of the performance.
Crye's "Multicam" technology was determined to be the best performing, across the widest range of environments (by a significant margin) and was subsequently selected as the basis for the new MTP camouflage, and combined with the existing British DPM pattern.[3][4]
See also
References
- ^ Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (2009-12-20). "Testing the new Multi-Terrain Camouflage" (PDF). Press Release. Ministry of Defence. Retrieved 2009-12-21.
- ^ "New Afghanistan camouflage design unveiled". MoD Defence News Online. 2009-12-21. Retrieved 2009-12-21.
- ^ "British Army to get new camouflage uniform". BBC News Online. 2009-12-20. Retrieved 2009-12-20.
- ^ Copping, Jasper (2009-12-20). "British Army to get new uniforms – turned down by the US and made in China". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2009-12-20.
- British Army (2009-12-16), Defence Internal Brief, no. 2009DIB/52, Ministry of Defence
{{citation}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - "British Army to get new uniform camouflage design" (Video). BBC News Online. 2009-12-20. Retrieved 2009-12-21.
- Sengupta, Kim (2009-12-21). "Army unveils a uniform for the Afghan landscape". Independent. Retrieved 2009-12-20.
- "British troops to get first new camouflage in 40 years". CNN. 2009-12-20. Retrieved 2009-12-21.