Military surplus listings are packed with abbreviations that make perfect sense to anyone who's served and mean nothing to anyone who hasn't. Here's a plain-English glossary of the ones that come up most — bookmark this one, it's the sort of thing you'll want to check back against.
Genuine MTP windproof smock — PCS-pattern combat kit, one of many abbreviations below.
Camouflage and clothing systems
- DPM — Disruptive Pattern Material, the classic four-colour woodland camo, used by more countries than just Britain. See our full camo history.
- S95 — Soldier 95, the 1995 combat clothing system, not a separate camo pattern.
- MTP — Multi-Terrain Pattern, the camo introduced in 2010 that replaced DPM.
- PCS — Personal Clothing System, the current combat uniform range built around MTP.
- MTP23 — the 2023 cut/construction update to PCS, same MTP pattern, better fit.
- Soldier 95 / S95 — see above; often confused with a pattern name when it's actually a clothing system name.
Dress and orders
- FAD — Future Army Dress, the current-pattern No2 Service Dress. See our full dress numbering guide.
- AWD — Action Working Dress, the Royal Navy's older everyday working uniform, now largely replaced by Rig 22.
- No1 / No2 / etc. — numbered "orders of dress," different numbering for each service.
- "Blues" — the informal name for Army No1 Dress specifically. See our Blues vs No1s guide.
Units and organisation
- ACF — Army Cadet Force. CCF — Combined Cadet Force (school-based). ATC — Air Training Corps.
- TA — Territorial Army, the older name for today's Army Reserve.
- TRF — Tactical Recognition Flash, a cloth unit-identifier patch worn on combat dress.
- UOTC — University Officers' Training Corps, a university-only Army Reserve unit. See our Sandhurst vs UOTC guide.
Condition and sourcing terms
- NOS — New Old Stock: genuinely new, unissued, but manufactured years ago.
- DMS — Direct Moulded Sole, a boot/shoe sole construction, not a specific boot model. See our DMS boots guide.
- NSN — NATO Stock Number, the long reference code printed on genuine issue labels. See our NSN guide.
- Issued vs private purchase — whether an item came through the official supply system or was bought independently. See our full explanation.
Come across an abbreviation on a listing you can't place? Email us at sales@jungleuk.com and we'll explain it — and it might end up added here.
The clothing generations
- CS95 — Combat Soldier 95, the layered system introduced in the mid-90s in DPM. The one most surplus comes from.
- PCS — Personal Clothing System, replaced CS95 from around 2011 in MTP. Current.
- MTP — Multi-Terrain Pattern, the camouflage itself, adopted 2010.
- PCS-CU — Combat Uniform, the PCS jacket and trousers specifically.
People say "S95" and "CS95" interchangeably. They mean the same thing.
Webbing generations
- 37 Pattern — wartime and post-war, cotton webbing, blancoed.
- 58 Pattern — the olive green set most people picture, in service into the 1990s.
- PLCE — Personal Load Carrying Equipment, from the late 80s. Bergens, side pouches, yoke.
- Virtus — current, from 2016. Scalable body armour and load carriage together.
Everyday abbreviations
- NSN — NATO Stock Number, the 13-digit item identifier.
- TRF — Tactical Recognition Flash, the regimental patch on the right arm.
- FAD — Future Army Dress, the current No2 service dress.
- OR / SNCO / WO — Other Ranks, Senior NCO, Warrant Officer.
- DMS — Directly Moulded Sole, the boot generation before the current ones.
- Blanco — the paste used to colour and waterproof cotton webbing. A verb as often as a noun.
Why this matters when buying
Sellers use these terms as shorthand and rarely explain them. Knowing that a "CS95 smock" is 1990s DPM and a "PCS smock" is post-2011 MTP tells you the era, the pattern and roughly the price before you look at a photograph.
Why the acronyms multiply
It looks like deliberate obscurity and it is not. Military clothing and equipment is procured as named systems, each with a designation, and those designations stay in use for decades after the system is replaced — because the kit is still in circulation, still being sold, and still being talked about by people who wore it.
So at any given moment several generations of terminology are in active use simultaneously. That is the actual source of the confusion, rather than any one term being especially difficult.
How to use this when buying
Two practical habits make surplus listings much easier to read:
- Treat the system name as a date. If you can place the system, you have placed the item within a band of years without needing anything else.
- Do not assume compatibility across generations. Kit from different systems was designed to work with its own contemporaries. Fittings, attachment methods and sizing conventions all changed, and things that look like they should clip together often do not.
When a listing uses a term you cannot place, ask. Any decent surplus seller can tell you which generation something belongs to, and that single answer usually resolves every other question you had about it.
Shop the kit
Everything below is genuine surplus, in stock now.
