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New fighter jet camouflage schemes

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Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#21

Post by electromagnetic »

tebbetts wrote: post #13
cabirum wrote: post #5

Does camouflage really helps in modern air combat? Aircrafts engage each other mostly on beyond visual range distances, and dogfighting in kinda rare now. Also, HUDs should assist in tracking of targets and highlight them, so camo will make no difference. The only use for camo I can think of is to hide the aircraft while it's stationed on the airstrip - in a relatively vulnerable position.

My guess is that most of the camouflage is to hide the airplane from humans on the ground. I would also guess an airplane providing support for ground troops would likely get shot at. They would paint a fake canopy on the underside of the Warthog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arnielee/4105880397/ . This was to make it hard to tell which way the airplane was turning.

It might be for take-off and landing too when the planes without typical near-ground combat are now extremely vulnerable. The Warthogs are unbelievably built to go through hell and back, an F-15 not so much.

> They would paint a fake canopy on the underside of the Warthog

I'd just hate that someone painted my exact location on the bottom of my plane so the enemy knows exactly where I'm sitting so they know exactly where to shoot at. I mean I'm sure everyone would know where the pilot is, but this would be like the Imperials painting a massive bullseye target around the ventilation tube on the Death Star.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#22

Post by electromagnetic »

nosse wrote: post #14
lbotos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. I read something recently that the last modern dogfight happened around 1999. I'm also confused as to how the concept of "hiding" which way a plane is flying can be achieved with this. If I'm still / have ground support and see something in the sky / radar I'm pretty sure no matter what color it is (even if it closely matches the sky) I could say which direction it was moving? What am I missing? Either…

One of the biggest threads to a fighter is another fighter flying above it. From the upper guys perspective everything is moving and everything below is green/grey/brown or dark blue. At the same time stealth technology is rising and using your own radar might show your own position. Fighter camo is probably not that big thing, but all things concerned it just might give a little edge in some situation.

I think fighter camo likely has a bigger role to take off and landing when they're not in a 100% safe area. The military doesn't just plan for the current war, but for all possible wars.

Fighters aren't going to handle the small arms fire like a Warthog will. So when you can't add the extra armour, it's probably worth making it harder to see.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#23

Post by electromagnetic »

philjackson wrote: post #16

I'm assuming camo. is more important for these planes when they're on the ground than in the air?

Near ground too, I would say. Take off and landing is a relatively slow process where they're highly vulnerable, especially the air-to-air fighters.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#24

Post by nosse »

ayu wrote: post #19
nosse wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zebras used it even before that. Practically all camouflage ideas can be found from nature.

Except they used it to deter bloodsucking insects. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-st...

How do you explain okapi and quagga? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quagga

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#25

Post by DanBC »

vilda wrote: post #18
cabirum wrote: post #5

Does camouflage really helps in modern air combat? Aircrafts engage each other mostly on beyond visual range distances, and dogfighting in kinda rare now. Also, HUDs should assist in tracking of targets and highlight them, so camo will make no difference. The only use for camo I can think of is to hide the aircraft while it's stationed on the airstrip - in a relatively vulnerable position.

The biggest danger in asymmetric warfare represent "stupid" weapons - ballistic or hand-launched RPG weapons. Misleading camouflage helps you here.

But aren't those ground based weapons? The camouflage is topside of the aircraft.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#26

Post by Nrsolis »

16s wrote: post #12

See, security through obscurity has a purpose.

"Security through obscurity" has ALWAYS had a purpose in the spectrum of techniques used to defeat the enemy. The term is just misapplied in the context of cryptographic systems to denote a system where the algorithm isn't published. e.g. if the security of your cryptosystem depends on anything more than just the security of the key, you're toast.

In NETSEC, we see tons of trojans/worms that try mightily to camouflage their existence with innocent-looking control protocols hidden in normal looking HTTP (or HTTPS) traffic and other things.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#27

Post by AdamGibbins »

DanBC wrote: post #25
vilda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest danger in asymmetric warfare represent "stupid" weapons - ballistic or hand-launched RPG weapons. Misleading camouflage helps you here.

But aren't those ground based weapons? The camouflage is topside of the aircraft.

Bottom also, the aircrafts are often painted grey on the underside.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#28

Post by thwest »

bigiain wrote: post #10

I wonder whether camouflage has changed in purpose (on fighter jets) and is no longer about "fooling" the human visual system, but about fooling computer vision. I'd guess those "New Aesthetic" style pixelated camo paintjobs would do a pretty good job of fooling OpenCV based classifiers…

The purpose of the camo didn't have to change, the purpose of computer vision has been to mimic the human visual system already. Both systems of perception take pains to match the sensed scene against expected structure of objects in the natural world (high contrast gradients at object boundaries, object flow). Anything that can be made to have random structure will provide false cues to edge and flow based perception. There is some evidence of the similarity of the perception systems in projects like SSIM that correlate structure of images under sparsifying transforms such as wavelets to human quality measures.

Re: New fighter jet camouflage schemes

#29

Post by bdunbar »

cabirum wrote: post #5

Does camouflage really helps in modern air combat? Aircrafts engage each other mostly on beyond visual range distances, and dogfighting in kinda rare now. Also, HUDs should assist in tracking of targets and highlight them, so camo will make no difference. The only use for camo I can think of is to hide the aircraft while it's stationed on the airstrip - in a relatively vulnerable position.

dogfighting in kinda rare now.

This is true, now. In large part because the USAF dominates the air so thoroughly that opposing air is toast the day the war starts.

This may not always be so.

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