Factory overdyed UCP jacket. Any info?

I recently received a purpose made, factory produced overdyed UCP jacket. You can see why I say that if you look at the hard plastic velcro and the zipper. These things are not going to take dye, yet they are green instead of gray like standard production units. I don't know if the velcro was dyed as well or if it came in that color. Not sure about the tags either, since sometimes these tags resist dye and sometimes they partially absorb it. The production date is 2005, which is about when people first started saying the pattern sucks and should be replaced. It's obviously been used, so maybe it was a limited trials piece?

Anybody know anything about this one?







Thanks!!

Steve

I've seen these a few times dyed this way both green and tan.

I'm guessing dyed for the green zone or night ops in the stan like us Brits did to our desert kit until the multicam was issued.

As for Velcro and that , the hard plastic stuff is/was green from memory ?

I know Brit troops dyed their stuff or wore temperate kit. I'm SURE US soldiers have done the same from time to time. Which is why at first that's what I thought this was. But this is different. The plastic bits on it are a true green, whereas the production stuff is almost a true gray (it does have a hint of green to it IMHO). I'll take a pic or two of the pieces next to each other and post them here. There's no chance they are the same stuff.

So if the plastic bits are green, and the plastic bits have to be sewn on during manufacturing (not after, based on how the stitching is), it's pretty certain this thing was made to be green from the start. And if that's the case, it probably was overdyed when in raw cloth form and manufactured from there.

Very curious!

Steve

I have seen these painted SOG style in the 173rd Recon.

owen

Those are probably field overdyed examples?

I took a picture of the udersides of the "green" and standard ACU arm pockets. Unfortunately the flash wipes out a lot of the color differences, but even with that you can see they aren't the same materials. Trust me, in normal lighting there's no chance of confusing which is which



Steve