There genuinely aren’t enough dark brown camo patterns available. Every other palette imaginable is catered, but not one that’s based on the colour of the actual ground that is beneath our feet on most of planet earth. I do wish this camo pattern was currently being printed as it is a good pattern not only for arid areas and darker, earthy woodland, but also for the majority of urban areas in the world aka not the nice, pristine, rich parts of western cities.
Above are some ‘in use’ photos I was able to find online. Since it is widely publicised that Plat-A-Tac produced these uniform sets for the MoD, it’s a safe bet that they were used by Special Forces alongside their Afghan counterparts.
This pattern takes its’ name from the Afghan National Directorate of Security, which was formed shortly after the transfer of power from the Taliban over to the western-supported Afghan government. Sadly, as with said government, the NDS organisation no longer exists, but it was a national intelligence and security agency tasked with combating the likes of treason, espionage and terrorism, making it roughly equivalent to MI5 or the FBI (at least in purpose).
Looking at this garment in particular; a fairly unique feature to earlier versions of Plat-A-Tac CUTS is the spacer mesh that is used to form the shoulder areas. This is of course the area where the shoulder straps of any gear will bear down, be it armour, chest rig, webbing or pack. Having some padding and maybe a little air flow in this area certainly makes sense on paper. Personally, while I do own a couple of these shirts they are only in rare camos and I am yet to wear them as of writing this post, so I can’t say from my own experience whether the mesh helps or hinders in any way. All I can say is that it is not present on the CUTS V4 that is currently in production, so it could be that the juice was perhaps not worth the squeeze.
Bicep pockets on this shirt are much like those found on a Crye AC combat shirt although they have both top flap and side zip openings. Also much like ACU shirts there is a strip of edging tape with double sided hook attached to the pocket flap, which can be used to cover up a small IRR/glint patch, or be stowed away to facilitate IFF (though said patch would be optional and is not stitched to the shirt from the factory as per some ACU).
Elbow pad pockets are in a similar style of those that Crye produced for a while on the Army Custom combat shirts specifically in the Generation 2 line. The internal loop fields visible here by their stitching also line up with the hook pieces stuck on to Crye’s combat elbow pads, which themselves featured an external plastic cap. Presumably Plat-A-Tac also made their own matching elbow pads at one point as they did with combat knee pads, though I don’t have any here to demonstrate.
Since the label lacks material information there isn’t anything I can definitively say here about the fabrics, but the camo sleeves are quite possibly a NY/CO blend and are ripstop, in keeping with other high end combat uniforms. The torso is a high stretch blend with a more cotton-like appearance and feel to it, as opposed to the highly synthetic torsos used in the Crye Gen 1 combat shirt or those generally found in sporting wear.
The actual camo used here of course is fairly reticent of US Woodland and earlier ERDL patterns. While the colour green is of course entirely absent, US Woodland itself is largely comprised of black, brown and a light khaki/tan, much like British DPM. If one were to simply exchange the greens in Woodland and DPM with a very dark brown, the end result would not be too far off the NDS pattern.
Another excellent article covering these shirts along with the matching trousers, smocks and caps can be found here:
Afghan NDS ERDL Camouflage (late 2000’s – 2021)
You can also (as of publishing this post) view some listings on the Plat-A-Tac website for these NDS items:
Mark
I own this version and one custom made by someone in HK who runs with a bunch of airsofters that like to use Rhodie camo.
Sadly did not get the BDU version as produced for the NDS from the Chinese contracts. The ones I found dried up.