The Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, under the Nordic Defense Cooperation (NORDEFCO) framework, have announced the first contract of awarding the Nordic Combat Uniform contract to Oskar Pedersen AS, Norway.

The Nordic Combat Uniform (NCU) program which started in 2016, is an effort of these countries to come out with a common uniform system. While this is a single procurement, the countries have signed their own contracts in accordance to their requirements and the overall procurement framework.  The value of the contract Oskar Pedersen AS, is valued at 425 million Euros for a 7 year period.

The Nordic Combat Uniform configuration is the same in all these countries which also includes clothing configurations for the climate conditions of the European and jungle and desert areas. It is comprised of underwear to outer layers. While it is a common configuration, the participating countries can put their own national camo patterns on the outer layers. The configurations are Camp uniform, Winter, Desert, and Jungle with the delivery of the NCU will be having the following as standard items as listed by Krigeren.dk:

• Underpants
• T-shirt
• Sports bra
• Long mesh wool underwear (intermediate, lightweight)
• Medium clothing, between
• Combat shirt, light
• Combat jacket, lightweight
• Combat trousers, lightweight
• Combat shirt, heavy
• Combat jacket, heavy
• Comb trousers, heavy
• Winter cover jacket
• Winter coveralls
• Rain jacket
• Rain pants

For the Winter to clothing the additional clothing will involve an extra warm wool sweater, extra warm winter jacket, extra warm winter trousers, coat jacket in winter pattern, and overalls in winter pattern. The NCU does not cover head gear, gloves, footwear, and protective equipment which are to be procured by the participating countries independently.

Oscar Pedersen AS will be leading a consortium to supply the NCU which is composed of Siamidis of Greece for the uniforms; WL Gore & Associates GmbH of Germany for the membrane and textile; and Aclima of Norway and Woolpower of Sweden for the wool underwear.

During the bidding for the NCU tests for the entries were done by a total of 420 regular soldiers and conscripts from the countries under the NORDEFCO in the different conditions that soldiers are expected to operate in. The decision was based on the feedback, technical assessments and the tenders by the bidding companies.