Two Rwandan Special Operations Force teams wearing M2015 Digital Woodland pattern camo took part the 14th Annual Warrior Competition in Jordan, writes Bob Morrison.
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While they were waiting for their time slot to effect the rescue of a High Value Individual from the KASOTC CQB ‘Shoot House’ one of the Rwandan competitors kindly agreed to pose for a Kit & Camo feature, for which I a most grateful.
Roughly around 2000 the Rwandan Armed Forces, who previously mostly wore variations of ‘Lizard’ pattern, started wearing patterns based on US M81 Woodland, but in 2015 a digital version of this was adopted for universal service and it was this camo which all the Rwandans wore at KASOTC. While this temperate pattern no doubt works very well in the jungles of Equatorial East Africa, it was far from ideal out on the dusty KASOTC ranges and training areas, but as none of the teams needed to rely on camouflage to tackle the varied AWC events, wearing national camo uniforms wasn’t actually an issue.
Normally I would snap the back panel of a combat shirt for an area representation of the pattern being covered, but as the Rwandans were just wearing UBACS (Under Body Armour Combat Shirts) with plain olive green back panels I had to resort to snapping a shoulder area instead. As can be seen, colours are the pretty much universal ‘woodland’ reddish brown and bottle green with black (to give depth) printed on a tan ripstop fabric base colour.
My thanks to Rwanda SOF Team 1 and SOF Team 2 and their contingent commander for putting up with my intrusive lenses. I suspect these ever-cheerful and highly capable African operators will turn up again in my future 14th AWC coverage.
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