Army Close to Final Jungle Boot Design | Military.com
The U.S. Army will soon outfit two brigades of soldiers with a new Jungle Combat Boot billed as more comfortable, faster drying and puncture resistant than the service's long-retired Vietnam-era jungle boot, equipment officials maintain.
Belleville Boot Company and Rocky Boots were selected in December to supply the Army with about 36,700 pairs of newly-designed Jungle Combat Boots as part of a direct requirement effort to select and field jungle boots to infantry soldiers to wear in the hot, tropical terrain of the Pacific theater.
The Army plans to field the 2nd and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii beginning in March
"We are really, really excited about the jungle boot program," Lt. Col. John Bryan, the product manager for Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, said during an interview with reporters at the base.
"This is important to the Army. It's important to soldiers in a hot, high-humidity, high moisture area, and we are responding as quickly as we possibly can with the best available, immediate capability we can get on soldiers feet quickly and then refine and improve as we go."
The Army and the Marine Corps retired the popular, Vietnam War-era jungle boots in the mid-2000s when both services transitioned to a desert-style combat boot for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The new Jungle Combat Boot looks similar to the Army Hot Weather Boot and feature rough-side out leather and speed laces. But they are radically different than the jungle boots soldiers wore throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
