Sportsman’s Guide FR ‘AC’ Combat Shirts – Inbetween Fake and Legit

Another type of Crye garment that’s caused a fair bit of debate online is this FR G2 Combat shirt. There was a lot of points presented for both the camps of real and fake over a few years until someone actually figured out roughly what the deal is. I’d be willing to bet a not insignificant amount of money that a couple of you out there own examples of these so I’ll do my best to convey all the details that I have regarding them.

The colour variations on these specific oddities include all of the following:
-Multicam
-AOR2
-Temperate MARPAT
-NWU1 ‘Blueberry’
-ABU Digital Tigerstripe
-Plain black

All of those colours appeared in fair quantities on various sale sites around the 2015 timeframe. Notice how the camo patterns cover off all 4 main branches of the US armed forces plus police? That’s something to keep in mind.

The basic cut of all the shirts I have seen of this type is actually Gen 2 Navy Custom, despite what all the labels say. The arm pockets feature the two buttons each with only a small amount of velcro surface area as part of the closure system and the elbow pad pockets are closed up with the intention of fitting the field elbow pads.

The sleeve materials used are all twill rather than ripstop and apparently all comprised of a flame resistant Aramid fibre. Whether the toro is the same fibre but woven completely different I do not know, but the sleeves are fairly stiff with an almost waxy texture, whereas the torso knit seems very similar to the standard AC combat shirt’s cotton jersey.

Green fabric tags and a silicone Crye tag are present in the correct places and in my estimation they are correct enough to probably not come from China but they’re definitely not the usual AC or NC labels. The silicone tag is at least 95% correct and you have to really look at it, almost with a magnifying glass, right next to an original example to notice any difference, however differences are there in terms of colouring, spacing and font/sizing. They are almost so small I’d be tempted to call them variances between batches, or quite likely a label made by some outsource contractor using production information and specs directly from Crye.

Similarly with the fabric tag the text is almost all right apart from saying Army instead of Navy. The CP logo however is incorrect proportionally (amongst other details) and the small sizing sub-label uses the wrong font entirely compared to normal ACs. Again, this lines up with being a label made by a sub-contractor rather than an illegal cloner.

The stitch work is all decent but some seams are just a little bit off straight and not 100% where they should be.  Though when I say off straight I don’t mean the sewer was veering and meandering all over the place, just that one of the pockets isn’t quite perfectly parallel at its’ edges for example.

It was discovered after some time that most of these were sold via Sportsman’s Guide, which isn’t a retailer I frequent but is one that is known for selling the occasional large batch of surplus/unwanted new military apparel and equipment that’s not seen elsewhere and at pretty good prices. Where SG got them is the unknown factor at this time, but based on what I see the conclusion I come to is this: It seems plausible, even likely, that Crye contracted out these shirts as they do with many other garments and perhaps with an eye of gaining contracts for standard issue garments to large conventional elements of the US military. Possibly around the time the US Army adopted ‘Scorpion OCP’ instead of Multicam and/or they lost the contracts for NSW and Army SF to Patagonia. A large portion of their production isn’t done at their Brooklyn Shipyard main location and it is highly likely these shirts were not made there either.

If anyone with evidence from reputable sources has something to add to the story though please feel free to get in touch. As I’ve said, a lot of the above is guesswork. If you just message me with ‘my buddy who knows things…’ however (which I get fairly often) you’ll get a damn good ignoring to be frank.