by CollectinSteve Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:15 am
Cool info! Thanks.
Here's a fairly common thing. A company makes a uniform, standard or test, for a military and so it is official. They have more cloth and cloth is expensive to have sitting in the warehouse. So they make more uniforms either exactly the same or with changes either to make them less expensive to produce or to make the government happy with it (i.e. some governments, like Canada, do not want exact copies of their uniforms).
My guess is the uniforms available on the website are like the above. I doubt the Norwegian military would allow them to sell the test samples when testing is not yet complete. Later on, after there is an official uniform or it is rejected, is a different story.
Sometimes only the commercial item exists, no official government contract. But special forces or other units privately purchase the uniforms and use them in Afghanistan or Iraq. Sometimes the camouflage is the same, but the cut is different. Or both are different. This means there is no difference between the uniform purchased on the Internet or a shop.
Steve