Some photos of a new type of MultiCam-influenced, “lizard” pattern based, commercially-developed camouflage pattern appeared on Militaryphotos.net a few days ago and immediately caused a bit of a stir.

Is it a new pattern that’s been developed for the Greek military?  Is it being used by Greek special operations units?  Was it developed by Crye?  Is it a commercial pattern?  Well, thanks to a tip-off from “Greek71Airborne” on the MP.net forums, I’ve been able to dig a bit further and bring you the full story.

The pattern has in fact been developed by a company called Pentagon based in Thessalonika, Greece.  Pentagon S.A. was first established in 1993, and is now a leading provider of clothing and equipment for military, police and security personnel as well as outdoors and adventure enthusiasts in Greece, and Europe.

Unlike most new patterns that come out these days, the “PENTACAM” pattern from Pentagon is not digital – it is fact based on the current (“analogue”) official camouflage of the Greek Armed Forces, known as “Greek Lizard” to camouflage collectors.  Greek Lizard is itself virtually a direct copy of the historic French “Lizard” camouflage – from which the famous Vietnam-era “Tiger Stripe” camouflage was derived.  Pentagon appear to have taken the Greek Lizard pattern and altered it somewhat to break up its distinctive stripes a bit, combined with a MultiCam-inspired color palette.  They also appear to have emulated the boundary-fading technique used on MultiCam to blend some of the color boundaries together.

The end result bears some similarity to the “All-Terrain Tiger Stripe” pattern from Tiger Stripe Products – which isn’t a surprise considering that both companies started with similar, brush-stroke/stripe-based patterns and then adapted them with MultiCam-inspired colors and fading techniques.  The PENTACAM pattern however does appear to retain truer to the striped pattern geometry of the mother pattern on which it is based.

Pentagon announced at the end of July that the pattern would available in Q4 of 2012, and that they will be making it available on the company’s version of the ACU – known as the CDU – as well as on their Bonnie Hats, Parkas and Boots.

     

Earlier this month, Pentagon delivered several sets of uniforms and headgear to the Hellenic Armed Forces Reserve Association (Leschi Efedron Enoplon Dinameon – LEFED) for evaluation – see the photos below – and also clarified that the pattern will be available to purchase throughout Europe after December 2012.

Whether or not this pattern really takes off remains to be seen, but whilst some will cast scorn upon it for basically being a recolored version of Greek Lizard, and for jumping on the MultiCam bandwagon, there is no denying that the Lizard / Tiger Stripe pattern remains a popular type – even if its not really that effective compared to the geometries, textures and colors of other patterns.

LEFED Recon Team photos:

                

(photos by “Goldbird555” and the Hellenic Armed Forces Reserves Association Recon Team)