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U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

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Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#121

Post by samstave »

bityard wrote: post #106
Sharlin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Very very few things in nature actually are made of large blobs of a single color (unless you're very shortsighted). Honestly, it baffles me why militaries didn't realize this earlier.

Source: former military member. In combat, camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible, and a fairly weak one at that. If the difference between staying alive and being dead is the pattern of your clothing, a lot of things have already gone seriously wrong and your chances of survival are not great. In the grand scheme of things, camo relatively high-hanging fruit. Money and time have mostly been spen…

I just had a really odd thought cross my head and want to just document here before I forget it:

The way rifles work with recoils driving the expulsion of a shell after firing and using that force to load the next round to chamber (the famous AK47 design)

--

Would there be a method of attaching a compressed water bottle with valve with a donut nozzle with vents out at angles to the optimal suppression of the muzzle flash.

The idea being that, like a paintball gun, the machine's trigger pull, also has a tangential trig that pulls an outburst a micro second from the rifle, in a ring mist of water/(some more expensive, toxic military fire-suppressant (ironic) to reduce the muzzle flash on shot...

May it reduce the muzzle flare? or is it too weak? Should it launch behind muzzle, after muzzle?

The bullet down the barrel triggers the valve when it hits 50% of barrel length. Once that induction occurs, it triggers the valve, and the flame suppressant cloud is spit out micro seconds prior to bullet breach...

---

I am convinced that we can use Davincis micro fluidics... turbulence drawings.

----

So let talk about next gen firing

The barrel release could be routed to drive the exhaust through channels which drive micro-turbine motors that slurp back through the external of barrel and infuse with water.

Working on this in Solid

Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#122

Post by evan_ »

hinkley wrote: post #92
denton-scratch wrote: post #37

I was hoping to learn why the pixelated designs started appearing. Author says they work; but what led anyone to think that those designs might work? Why did they try them in the first place? And actually, why do they work? I find it bizarre that this is all done by private companies, competing in public competitions, with royalties to be paid for the chosen design. And I'm quite surprised that some designs were foun…

During the I-for-get-which war, the army hired color-blind spotters because the enemy camo turned out to be fooling fully sighted people but was less effective with red-green color blindness. I don't recall if it was texture or contrast issues but they stood out against the trees and shrubbery enough to locate. So we not only have to worry about invisible spectra, but some filters on visible light may reveal the targ…

This was used in Vietnam. My neighbor growing up had this condition and was a spotter in Vietnam. He'd be flown over areas of jungle in a helicopter and he would be able to easily spot camouflaged structures. He would then photograph them and mark up what he saw. He parlayed this experience into a successful career in photojournalism after he got out of the military.

Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#123

Post by russellbeattie »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #91
guessbest wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find the who camouflage switch to every branch of service, including the navy to be bizarre. Who thought it was good idea for navy seamen to be camouflaged in the water? With that line of reasoning why didn't the airforce get their own camouflage to look like a flight line? hah > After six years in the fleet and some controversy, the blue-and-gray cammies could be headed for Davy Jones' seabag. https://w…

Much of this is service pride, politics, and recruiting. If the other services switch and you don't, your service looks dated, boring, and irrelevant. Imagine the JavaScript cool kid mindset but with guns.

> Imagine the JavaScript cool kid mindset but with guns.

A more terrifying sentence than this has rarely been written.

Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#126

Post by spywaregorilla »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #102
spywaregorilla wrote: post #100

Spotting dudes in camo seems like a prime opportunity for neural net ar

There's nothing useful to deploy it on though--the 'future soldier' concept of the 90s never went anywhere ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Soldier ) and we don't have a computer platform on every soldier. IMHO I'd stick to using machine learning to detect stealth aircraft and missiles to improve intercepting them.

I've heard the javelin missile launchers have been great in ukraine because they can double as night / thermal vision. This concept seems similar to me. Never been on a battlefield but I guess it seems dubious that most modern soldiers don't have some form of digital aid?

Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#127

Post by Sharlin »

samstave wrote: post #121
bityard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: former military member. In combat, camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible, and a fairly weak one at that. If the difference between staying alive and being dead is the pattern of your clothing, a lot of things have already gone seriously wrong and your chances of survival are not great. In the grand scheme of things, camo relatively high-hanging fruit. Money and time have mostly been spen…

I just had a really odd thought cross my head and want to just document here before I forget it: The way rifles work with recoils driving the expulsion of a shell after firing and using that force to load the next round to chamber (the famous AK47 design) -- Would there be a method of attaching a compressed water bottle with valve with a donut nozzle with vents out at angles to the optimal suppression of the muzzle f…

I don't think muzzle flash is a big problem in today's rifles. Any powder left burning by the time the bullet exits the barrel is wasted energy, so things tend to get optimized pretty thoroughly (this is the field of internal and transitional ballistics). Carbine-length firearms (if they're chambered for rifle rounds) do tend to have bigger issues with muzzle flash. Flash suppressors [1], either integrated or add-on, help and have exactly zero complexity compared to a hypothetical water mister.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_suppressor

Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#128

Post by jessaustin »

vopi wrote: post #65
jessaustin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had stopped with the first sentence, we could have written it off as sarcasm. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program appears to be in a state of suspended development, with little progress made in 2021 toward improving its lackluster performance. The latest report by the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) reveals stagnation and even backsliding in some fleet reliability measures. And tha…

Could you comment on the price aspect I thought up? As I understand it is cheap and only the cost per hour is an issue. Obviously the actual program is expensive, but I wanna ignore that for now and focus on the actual performance. Because I'm at work and can't look through the full 372 page non-public report linked, can you provide some page numbers I could look at? I'm curious what the actual issues are in actual u…

I am just a layman with limited research time.

You and me both! Given the wild swings in points-voting seen ITT, it seems perhaps MIC reptiles and other lovers of arcane jargon have more time on their hands than we mere subjects have. I linked the POGO report first as it seems most authoritative with respect to overall program cost and military effectiveness. With respect to the specific question of cost/plane (although I don't think we can just forget cost/hour), this Forbes article has the best explanation I've seen. [0] The beginning of the following selection acknowledges one accounting method that might support the idea that the unit cost is low. However, when more accurate methods are used, that idea makes less sense.

At $78 million the fifth-generation F-35A’s unit cost compares favorably to the latest non-stealth 4.5-generation Western fighter. The Rafale, Typhoon, Gripen-E and F-15EX are more expensive at $85 to $100 million apiece. The older F-16 and Super Hornet are modestly cheaper at $65 to $75 million each. But while these aircraft do have certain performance advantages over the F-35, all are vastly more vulnerable to long-range anti-aircraft missiles proliferating in militaries across the globe.

However, the F-35 unit price metric has the shortcoming of failing to reflect additional costs in spare parts, logistics facilities and so forth that come with F-35 purchases. When those are spread out across F-35A orders in 2021 they lead to a ‘Gross Weapon Unit Cost’ in budget documents of $110 million for 2021, higher than in preceding years due in part to decreased volume of orders.

Overall, though, a moderate increase in unit price arguably isn’t the main issue, because procurement costs account for less than a quarter of the $1.7 trillion projected lifetime cost of the F-35 program.

Instead, a report published by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on July 7 warns that its sustainment—currently expected to total $1.27 trillion in real dollars—which threatens to break the Pentagon budget.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2021/07/31/f-35...

Re: U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

#129

Post by lupire »

jollybean wrote: post #113
bityard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source: former military member. In combat, camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible, and a fairly weak one at that. If the difference between staying alive and being dead is the pattern of your clothing, a lot of things have already gone seriously wrong and your chances of survival are not great. In the grand scheme of things, camo relatively high-hanging fruit. Money and time have mostly been spen…

In the first phase of Ukrainian war soldiers were firing a lot of line of sight, it does matter. And especially the IR / night vision opportunities are real. It's very 'low hanging fruit'. It's ridiculous that that a 20 Trillion dollar Army has 'camouflage' that is very clearly crap next to better camo. These tests could have literally been run in a day, even back in the 1950s. Some soldiers, some screens, a few came…

What camouflage is going to work anywhere where you are traveling miles per day to conquer territory, usually in cities?
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