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U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)

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

#151

Post by jcranmer »

volumetric wrote: post #131
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Air Force did get their own camo - the ABU (Airman Battle Uniform) digital tiger-stripe; based on a Vietnam-era tiger-stripe uniform but with a color palette similar to the UCP; only with more blue. In fact, it's not just their own camouflage pattern, the ABU actually had a distinctive blouse and pants that are different from the BDU that came before, or the ACU that the Army had adopted. Then they took the sage-…

I don't get why the branches in which very few folks are likely to need camo (basically anyone other than the army, then, and some sub-divisions of other branches like the marine corp) don't go with old-school olive drab or navy or something. Those single-color uniforms with a slightly dressy cut looked damn slick. I'd think that'd be better for recruiting or improving morale or whatever than the camo uniforms (which…

One advantage of camo uniforms for working utility uniforms is they tend to be effective in hiding things like grime and mud, which consequently means you need to launder them less frequently to keep up the same appearance. If you've got a solid single-color uniform, chances are that these will stick out like a sore thumb. That was one thing that sailors liked about the old US Navy NWU (the one that camouflaged you very effectively if you fell in the water)--really good at hiding paint drips.

With regards to looking good, I don't think it's necessarily that the look good with appropriate materials, but more that they look good only when they are properly starched and the like to maintain crisp lines.

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

#152

Post by rcurry »

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…

That’s kind of like hunters who buy expensive camo and then their wife washes it with laundry detergent that contains brightening agents. To human eyes it still looks like camo, but to the deer you end up looking like Barney the Dinosaur.

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

#153

Post by jcranmer »

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…

There are, it seems, a few aspects that went into the seemingly-obviously-poor decision to go with UCP.

The first is that the criteria that appears to have been most important was performance in near-IR (i.e., night vision). Humans can't see in NIR themselves, so it's not readily apparent that the UCP is actually pretty good camo in NIR conditions. It's pretty atrocious in visible light, though.

The second is the requirement that the camo pattern be good in all environments. And "standard" woodland patterns to be utterly horrendous in sandy desert environments, while desert patterns do similarly bad in woodland environments. And you can see how something like the UCP might score well--while it's not a good camo pattern for any visible pattern, it sticks out less than a standard woodland in desert or vice versa. Of course, there were other patterns at that time that performed strictly better than UCP in all environments (save NIR).

The main kicker, though, is that the winning pattern seems to have been constructed out of elements of all the participating patterns... with no follow-up work done to make sure that the resulting combination actually worked. As you say, this is where some tests would have saved an awful lot of embarrassment, and my suspicion is these tests were not run for either time or money reasons. (And yes, this is a false economy here, but it's one that I can really believe bureaucracies pursuing).

There is historical precedence for this kind of short-sightedness however: the Mark 14 Torpedo, the main torpedo the US used in WW2. Which didn't work, and the Navy's Board of Ordnance took a couple years (and ultimately an unsanctioned live-fire test demonstrating that it didn't work) to be convinced that they actually didn't work rather than the submariners being packs of incompetent morons.

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

#154

Post by happyopossum »

malkia wrote: post #138

Why do (US?) hunters go in camouflage? Would that trick the animals... or rather trick other hunters, and not see them... always seemed weird going in full camouflage... for hunting.

Most hunters in the US wear a blaze orange vest or hat to identify themselves to other hunters. In some states it's codified by law, and in others it's strongly encouraged (in California it's a big part of the mandatory hunter safety course, but is not legally required).

Many big game animals are color-blind (or more specifically, see color differently than we do), so a camo pattern with orange can still hide one from a deer, while making you visible to humans.

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

#155

Post by rcurry »

nordsieck wrote: post #90
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…

> 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 Not everything the military does is about effectiveness. Sometimes senior NCOs want the enlisted to "look military", not just…

The new Navy camouflage is designed to keep your uniform looking clean when you are working around paints and oils and so on. It’s purely for workplace aesthetics and not intended to hide you from anyone.

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

#156

Post by hnarn »

Sharlin wrote: post #99
danielvf wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really so much about the pixels being square as the fractal-ish nature of mordern pixel camos that result in a "scale invariance" effect. There's details and contrast at the level of the small pixels, and there's details and contrasts are medium levels, and then again at large levels. Previous US army camo mostly had detail at only one scale level. As jcranmer says, there's more details on the reasons it wor…

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.

> it baffles me why militaries didn't realize this earlier

Waffen-SS used dotted camouflage in the late 1930s (Platanenmuster), so depending on what you mean by “earlier” the idea of camouflage without “large blobs” isn't that modern.

The Erbsenmuster from 1944 is an even better example of this type of camouflage.

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

#157

Post by abrokenpipe »

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…

A flash hider such as a "3 prong" achieves the same affect with no moving parts, also suppressors can pretty much eliminate all flash and offer hearing protection and additional signature reduction by reducing the db levels and changing the pitch of the noise.

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

#158

Post by russellbeattie »

battery_glasses wrote: post #130

If you want this website to remotely readable you can run this in your browser console when the page is up: document.querySelectorAll('p').forEach(elm => elm.style.width = "93vw")

I really wish Chrome for Android had a menu option for "Show Simplified View", rather than just guessing. Some of the worst sites won't trigger it, presumably because the HTML is so simple the algorithm assumes you don't need it.

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

#159

Post by denton-scratch »

danielvf wrote: post #58
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…

It's not really so much about the pixels being square as the fractal-ish nature of mordern pixel camos that result in a "scale invariance" effect. There's details and contrast at the level of the small pixels, and there's details and contrasts are medium levels, and then again at large levels. Previous US army camo mostly had detail at only one scale level. As jcranmer says, there's more details on the reasons it wor…

Well, I'm now much better informed!

It does sound as if there's not much methodology in this business, beyond empirical testing. Like, is there a science of 'camouflagology'? [oops, when inventing words, never mix latin and greek]

It just seems like it's basically lore, gathered from talking to fgillies and field experience, augmented by tests (which may be omitted, or the results ignored). Anyway, it might be fun to take a minor in camouflagology.

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