when did the army switch from bdu to acu
Army Combat Uniform First unveiled in June 2004,[1] it is the successor to the Battle Dress Uniform (BDU) and Desert Camouflage Uniform (DCU) worn from the 1980s and 1990s through the early 2000s, respectively.[2] The ACU and its component materials are manufactured by the existing industrial infrastructure which produced the now-obsolete BDU. Official military-grade ACUs are made of 50% nylon and 50% cotton. All other blends are not official issue.[3]
Army Combat Uniform In May 2014, the Army unofficially announced that the Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP) would replace UCP on the ACU. The original "Scorpion" pattern was developed at United States Army Soldier Systems Center by Crye Precision in 2002 for the Objective Force Warrior program. Crye later modified and trademarked their version of the pattern as MultiCam, which was selected for use by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2010. After talks to officially adopt MultiCam broke down over costs in late 2013, the Army began experimenting with the original Scorpion pattern, creating a variant code named "Scorpion W2", noting that while a pattern can be copyrighted, a color palette cannot and that beyond 50 meters the actual pattern is "not that relevant." The pattern resembles MultiCam with muted greens, light beige, and dark brown colors, but uses fewer beige and brown patches and no vertical twig and branch elements.[12] On 31 July 2014, the Army formally announced that the pattern would begin being issued in uniforms in summer 2015. The official name is intended to emphasize its use beyond Afghanistan to all combatant commands.[13] The UCP pattern is planned to be fully replaced by the OCP on the ACU by 1 October 2019.[14] ACUs printed in OCP first became available for purchase on 1 July 2015, with deployed soldiers already being issued uniforms and equipment in the new pattern.[15]