The exact naming convention of these is certainly not official and somewhat debateable, but this specific pair of trousers does fall inbetween the designs of Generations 1 and 2. There are a couple of other similar designs out there from around the same time period however, again none of which have official designations, so it’s a bit of a minefield.
From the tops of the knee pad stretch panels and up these are pretty much identical to Gen 2 AC combat trousers. Same belt loop arrangement, same arch on top of the rear of the waistband, same back pockets with small squares of velcro closure, same primary cargo pocket design. Same slash and ‘dip’ pockets up front.
As with standard Gen 2 combat trousers, there is a 1″ Ladderloc hard mounted inside each slash pocket using edging ribbon. A length of light webbing runs downwards through a slot in the very bottom of the pocket and is stitched to the insides of the tops of the knee pad pockets, allowing for height adjustment of the pads.
One notably unique feature of this briefly-produced variant is the system to cinch down the knee pads. G1s had wide elastic inside at the front, whereas G2s had the the simple velcro tab externally behind the knee that was then carried forward in to future generations.
Here, there are 2 webbing loops on the sides of the pad pocket and then another loop behind the knee. A length of bungee cord runs around these and can be tightened with a ‘Toaster’ cordloc.
Ankle pockets and ankle velcro cuff tabs are the same as those on Gen 2s, but the arch shaping at the bottom of the ankles was a feature carried over from G1.
Standard PVC brand tag that was found on both Gen 1 and 2 production.
Sadly these early style green labels didn’t have the best staying power in terms of the printing, and these pants did see a few wears and wash cycles. The basic formatting of the label is the same as G1 items and the fabric a slightly darker green, again carried over from G1. Also from G1 is this coil zip with a black rubber (probably PVC) over mould on the actual pull. A few very early G2s also had these zips and the green labels were also mounted here inside the fly for a time, before eventually moving inside to one of the slash pockets.
Overall I’m just fortunate to have found this pair in my size and in really quite good condition for their age and rarity. While there have been a few Gen 3 combat shirts and pants sold through Tactical Distributors in the 3 col desert pattern, there was only the one batch and the overall number of Crye uniforms in this pattern that exist is fairly low considering how widely it was issued throughout the US military.
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