Collection
ORC Industries PCU / Personal Clothing System
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The PCU takes cold-weather gear to the highest level
By Lance Cpl. Erik Villagran This Image was released by the United States Marine Corps
with the ID 060818-M-4675V
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The 16 garments that make up PCU
1. Crew neck silkweight T-Shirt (lvl1)
2. Silkweight boxer shorts (lvl1)
3. Long-Sleeve top (lvl1)
4. Long underwear (lvl1)
5. Long-Sleeve top (lvl2)
6. Long underwear (lvl2)
7. Mid layer jacket (lvl3)
8. Soft windshirt (lvl4)
9. Softshell top (lvl5)
10. Softshell pant (lvl5)
11. Hardshell top (lvl6)
12. Hardshell pant (lvl6)
13. Insulated coat (lvl7)
14. Insulated pant (lvl7)
15. Insulated vest (lvl7)
16. Combat shirt (lvl9)
At the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, US forces were in extreme cold conditions, and the clothing systems they operated at that time were not suitable for such conditions.
In 2002, US Army Master Sergeant Tony Pryor, who later received a silver star, made a phone call from the Hindu Kush (a mountain system in Afghanistan and Pakistan) to Rick Elder, a specialist on the Natick Soldier Systems Special Projects team. Pryor demanded that Natick Soldier come up with a better solution to keep the soldiers in such conditions.
An experienced team has been assembled to tackle this problem, including Chief Petty Officer Scott Williams, a former officer in charge from the Naval Special Warfare Detachment based in Kodiak, Alaska, where the newly minted seals are trained in cold weather. The experienced team also included civilians with vast experience in cold conditions, such as Mark Twiet, and a year later they developed and released an interchangeable clothing system called PCU, or Protective Combat Uniform, which provided comprehensive cold weather protection options for the military. ...
By the 1980s, Natick was developing what would become the ECWCS (Extended Cold Weather Clothing System), which began to be issued to soldiers in 1986. While ECWCS will be modernized by new generations many years later, these changes will not reflect the pace at which civilian clothing for cold conditions has evolved. Because of all this, that very Pryor phone call was made from the mountains of Afghanistan.
The development of the PCU system was both a radical rethinking of the first prerequisites underlying the creation of such a clothing system, and the opportunity to apply new revolutionary materials, which, according to civil mountaineering, radically changed this area.
