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One of the things we love about independent watchmaking is the ability for a brand to move swiftly on a project based on feedback from their clients, collaborators, and the watch world writ large. A new release from Collective and Armin Strom is a great example of how one good idea can quickly beget another, and in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t even take that long. Not even two years ago, Collective and Armin Strom released the P.03 Gravity Equal Force, a creative take on one of Armin Strom’s signature designs. The concept behind the original release was to make this bit of high end watchmaking into something truly tactical, and its aesthetic was inspired by apparel, packs, and EDC tools in its finishing, color, and overall vibe. This new release, the P.03 “Night Ops,” takes that idea a step further, and does what arguably should have been done the first time around: blacking out the case.
It seems obvious, right? When you think “tactical” in watchmaking, you probably think “black,” at least to some extent. I have to say, though, that until I heard Collective and Armin Strom were making this new edition, the thought never actually crossed my mind that the original should have been black. I think that speaks to the genuine novelty of that first watch. It’s so rare for a haute horlogerie brand like Armin Strom to dabble in EDC inspiration that the first try really sold me. The new Night Ops variant feels like a more fully realized version of the concept, however.
Much of what you see here carried over from the first collaboration, and still more is carried over from the Gravity Equal Force platform itself, but with a twist. We get a blacked out, 41mm titanium case with a khaki green fumé dial with a matte finish, and the Collective releases add lume to the dial and a guilloche base plate with a frag-style pattern.
The star of the show, however, is Armin Strom’s Caliber ASB19, which offers an ingenious solution to one of the great watchmaking problems: inconsistent power delivery through the duration of the power reserve. As any watch movement’s mainspring unwinds, it will gradually exert less force on the gear train, which generally leads to less accurate timekeeping as there’s less and less in the proverbial tank. There have been a variety of fixes to this problem engineered by ambitious watchmakers throughout the centuries. Armin Strom uses what they call a “stop work” mechanism, which keeps the mainspring from ever fully unwinding, and always topped off with enough power to deliver enough force for accurate timekeeping. The Gravity Equal Force is the first automatic watch with what Armin Strom calls “equal force transmission.”
