You know you are in for an interesting jacket when it has an operating manual. The Alpha Jacket, designed by Brad Thor and produced by ScotteVest has enough pockets (35 to be exact) to store an aircraft carrier.

Available for about $200, the Alpha Jacket has been ScotteVest’s fastest-selling item in its history. The company had trouble keeping up with demand for quite awhile.

Details on the jacket and marketing language below. The GIF’s are courtesy of TheBlaze.com. (Open the gallery to see the animations.)

And yes, I sent this to my wife as a gift “idea”.

The Alpha is not just a great looking jacket designed in collaboration with #1 New York Times bestselling thriller author, Brad Thor… and it’s not just the latest concealed carry jacket from SCOTTEVEST. The Alpha is much, much more. Anyone can make a “tactical” jacket that looks tactical. The real finesse comes when a jacket helps you blend into a crowd. After all, when it comes to concealed carry garments, it’s not concealed if they know you are carrying it (whatever “it” you choose to carry). This is the philosophy behind the espionage concept of a Gray Man… someone who is eminently capable, but from all outward appearances is just another person going about their business. As Sun Tzu wrote, “All war is deception.” The Brad Thor Alpha Jacket by SCOTTEVEST is the most deceptively capable concealed carry jacket the world has ever seen.

On a Need to Know Basis:

There are far too many features to list out here, but these are the ones you “need to know” about. Explore the printable, 8 page Operator Manual for the full story and descriptions for each pocket and feature. To view some of the features in action, click here.

• Stealth Exterior: Jacket exterior is made from a quiet (not crunchy) softshell in a black, IR-signature reducing matte finish that blends into the landscape.
• Covert Styling: Exterior pockets and panels are designed to be subtle and not print as a tactical-styled jacket. Removable exterior branding completes the slick exterior look.
• Rapid Access Panels (RAPs): The RAPs provide access to a mid-layer of pocketing without needing to unzip the jacket. They are completely ambidextrous, and are also pockets themselves, sized to carry an iPad or even a laptop. These cavernous pocket panels can be used as a dump pouch for mag changes or even for evidence collection or foraging in a survival/wilderness E&E situation. The lower 2/3 of the panel interiors are lined with tricot (non-crunchy soft side loop material as on the interior of camera bags) for attaching hook-side accessories like holsters, mag holders and pouches. These panels are the heart of your CCW pocket system and provide flexibility to customize how you carry gear based upon your mission. Read the Operator Manual for holster suggestions and gear ideas.
• Sleeve Dagger Pockets: Taking a page from the OSS, long, narrow, tricot-lined pockets are concealed on the inner wrist of each sleeve to hold a sleeve dagger like the Benchmade SOCP. They also hold small flashlights, pens and similarly-sized items.
• Hidden Tech Features: There is an interior clear touch cell phone pocket so you can see your touchscreen phone (and use it) through the clear material without removing it from your pocket. All pockets include SeV’s patented Personal Area Network (PAN) to route wires for power or communications from any pocket to any other pocket.
• RFID-blocking Pocket: The jacket contains one secure travel documents pocket with a color-coded large locking zipper. This RFID-blocking interior pocket is sized to hold a passport and wallet and constitutes a strong first line of defense against RFID skimming tech attacks. Check out the Operator Manual for more details about the RFID pocket (page 5). If you want full-spectrum electronic signal blocking, check out theShieldSak, which can even take your phone off-grid.
• Warmth The Alpha Jacket is designed for use in “chilly” weather down to cold weather. While warmth is ultimately subjective, our warmth chart shows about where we think it falls on the spectrum.
• Water-repellence The exterior is 100% poly softshell material. The Alpha is not designated as “waterproof” because it does not have sealed seams, but the material itself is very water resistant. It has a TPU membrane, which prevents water from soaking in to reach you even if the exterior gets wet. We tested this during a freak torrential rain/hail storm at our headquarters in Idaho in September, 2013 when we ran outside in the Alpha for 5 minutes. Some rain soaked into the outer shell, but not a drop made it inside.