General, page-156

This contract suggests to me that the US Army might have made a decision on the final version of the Improved Hot Weather Combat Uniform (IHWCU).

To recap, the IHWCU is an alternative for the Army Combat Uniform (ACU) for wear in hot environments. While the two uniforms share the Army’s Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP), the design and fabric are both different.

In their quest to design the IHWCU, the US Army tested multiple fabrics and design features in multiple field trials during 2015-2017. As at December 2017, the chosen fabric was a 5.7 oz, 57/43 NYCO blend by Invista/Cordura which offered faster drying time and improved air permeability of 70cfm versus the 30cfm of the ACU’s 50/50 NYCO. Early last year, the Army conducted another field trial testing 65,000 IHWCU manufactured from the Invista/Cordura NyCo. However, it was still planned to test up to five additional fabric types with different uniform design elements in another wear test in the Pacific mid last year.

The Army’s goal was to have a final version of the IHWCU worked out during the 2019 fiscal year –that is, sometime between October 2018 and September 2019. It is now halfway through that period.

In April/May last year, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) issued a solicitation notice for an estimated quantity of 303,000 combined ACU and IHWCU coats and 303,000 ACU and IHWCU trousers for a 2 year term contract, with an initial production lead time of 5 months. The IHWCU uniforms were to be sewn from a pattern that had been revised as recently as April 2018. The completed uniforms were to be shipped to the Pendergrass Distribution Center in Georgia, which is the primary location for storage and distribution of US Army uniforms under contract with the DLA.

In July last year, it was noted here that two contracts for IHWCU had been issued. Industries of the Blind in Greensboro received a 1 year contract to cut and sew IHWCU coats and Goodwill Industries of South Florida announced that it had been awarded a $14,547,195 contract to manufacture IHWCU trousers. While the value of the Goodwill contract certainly gave the impression that it related to the April/May IHWCU solicitation, the nominated completion date of Feb. 28, 2020 didn’t fit the timeframe of a 2 year contract with 5 month production lead in. Another piece of the jigsaw that also didn’t fit was that the fact that the contracting activity was the U.S. Army Contracting Command, the Aberdeen Proving Ground, which is where US Army research and testing is carried out. Finally, it was questionable whether the Army would have made a decision on the IHWCU by July last year when, just a few months earlier, they said their goal was to have it worked out sometime between October 2018 and September 2019. After all, the Army doesn’t have a reputation for making decisions ahead of schedule.

But now, a new IHWCU contract has been announced. Aurora Industries in Puerto Rico has been awarded a maximum $18,672,261 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for ACU and IHWCU coats. This contract is stated to be for 2 years and it has a completion date of September 3, 2021. The contracting activity is the DLA. The value of the contract, its 2 year duration with apparent 5-6 months lead time and DLA contracting activity fits neatly with the solicitation notice issued by the DLA last April/May. In addition, the timing of this contract corresponds with when the Army said it was aiming to have a final version of the IHWCU worked out.

Add to this the fact that, in September last year, the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) listed a permethrin spray mg/cm2 specification for the IHWCU.

To me, the US Army’s long quest for a lightweight, more breathable NyCo now seems sorted but what that means for Alexium is unclear. For so long now, Alexium has said it was working with a fabric manufacturing partner on FR treatment for a lightweight, more breathable NyCo. It was explained that that process was delayed because the original fabric developed had to be re-engineered. But now it looks like the Army has finally settled on a lightweight NyCo fabric, for the IHWCU at least.

Will the new NyCo IHWCU be FR treated? Is the fabric for this new IHWCU the same NyCo fabric that Alexium has been working on which recently passed the Pyroman test but was said to be targeted for the FR-ACU program?

Perhaps, soon, we will finally get some answers.