<P> The Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), also unofficially referred to as ACUPAT (Army Combat Uniform Pattern) or Digital Camouflage (digicam), is a digital military camouflage pattern formerly used in the United States Army's Army Combat Uniform . The pattern was chosen after several laboratory and field tests that occurred from 2003 to 2004, although it has been established that UCP may well have been adopted without field testing against other patterns . Its pixelated pattern is a modification of the United States Marine Corps' MARPAT camouflage pattern which is similar to the Canadian CADPAT scheme . </P> <P> The effectiveness of the pattern was questioned, leading to several research programs being conducted to modify or replace the current standard issue pattern . In July 2014, the Army announced that Operational Camouflage Pattern had been selected as the replacement pattern, and will completely replace the former pattern by the end of September 2019 . </P> <P> Three patterns were developed, called All Over Brush, Track, and Shadow / Line . For each pattern, there were four color combinations, which corresponded to a specific type of terrain, however, all four patterns used tan as their base color . The three remaining colors were green, brown, and black for the Woodland pattern, dark tan, khaki, and brown for the Desert pattern, light gray, medium gray, and black for the Urban pattern, and dark tan, light gray, and brown for the Desert / Urban pattern . </P> <P> There were fifteen evaluations, which took place at Fort Benning, Fort Polk, Fort Irwin, Fort Lewis, and Yakima, Washington . The camouflage patterns were then rated on their blending, brightness, contrast, and detection by U.S. Army soldiers, during the daytime, and also at night using night vision devices . </P>

When did the army switch to digital camo