I guess it all started when I chance upon the cover of this book at my local book store. The SF trooper was in some kind of Marpart/AOR BDU which piqued my curiosity.
A brief discussion with my 1/6 buddy Tang yield no answers; as to our understanding AOR pattern (which we thought what it was…) was only exclusive to Navy NSW.
In the end, the answer proved to be a fairly straight forward & tactical one: the SF operators had adopted the same uniform as their ANCOP (Afghan National Civil Order Police) trainees to prevent being singled out as Americans & pick off by the TB.
The BDU pattern in question was a new uniform adopted by ANCOP to differentiate themselves from the regular police. The ‘HyperStealth Spec4ce Afghan Sierra‘ pattern was supplied by HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp (a Canadian company I think…).
The SF trooper in the cover (& my bash) belongs to ODA7316 of the 7thSFG, whose area of operations is Latin America. However due to the general demand & lack of SF personnel in A’stan, they had been assigned to assist in training (something which SF is traditionally good at) ANCOP in policing procedures: setting of roadblocks, manning checkpoints etc.
Of course so far nobody has manufactured any ‘HyperStealth Spec4ce Afghan Sierra ‘ in 1/6 so I had to compromise. I went with the more subtle TC’s HPFU in favor of Marpart. For the rest of the loadout, it was just what I could find & at the same time sticking as close to the reference where possible. For the patches my approach was rather primitive; basically just re-size the downloaded images & print them out on A4 using the office printer & slap on some Velcro or some cases plain double side tape. And to finish off, some very light weathering.
Special thanks to my 1/6 buddies for indulging my queries & Tang for posting the thread on forum to get the mystery BDU cleared up.
PARTS:
H/s: BBI
Body: CD
BDU: TC
RBAV-SF: PH
MICH: PH
Pouches: PH+TC
Hiking shoes: BBI
Watch: ZCWO
Glove hands: SS
Translation holder: SS
MK18 ‘Foehammer’: SS
.45 ‘Heartbreaker’: ???
.45 hostler: Dr Figures
Patches: self printed except flag patches
