quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
As stated, true black is seldom seen in nature, and because of its strong contrast with other colors, it’s often the first thing that’s seen when scanning an area. I remember a report about various types of camouflage clothing conducted some years ago, and how the first thing about the wearer that was spotted were his black boots.

Something I didn’t recognize until a couple of years ago is how well a disruptive camo pattern works to delay “seeing” an individual even at very close distances. During one exercise the role-playing team leader who was dressed in MultiCam crouched behind a counter, but was otherwise in plain view in a school classroom. When I quickly peeked over the counter, the disruptive pattern of his clothing caused a brief, but noticeable delay in my identifying him as an armed individual.

That experience convinced me of the value of wearing such clothing even when its colors and patterns don’t blend into the background, such as in an urban setting. I.e., I believe it would be faster for a BG to pick up and track an officer making a room entry who was dressed all in black than in a camo outfit.

Went to a sniper school some years ago taught by a couple SF guys that at the time had just come back from Afghanistan. They did a drill with us using just old school woodland camo. At 300 yards without optics depending on the backround the camo made the person nearly invisible with the naked eye. Then the subject put on a black beanie and immediately stood out. It was a great drill demonstrating why camo was important. The digital camo was even more effective.

I have also felt that black had no place on an entry team or any special response team. It simply duplicates an old school T-19 target, by contrasting against nearly any backround other than an area absent of any light, which is seldom the situation in urban combat situations. We have finally adopted Multicam, it has only taken 20 years.

quote:

Originally posted by ksss:

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
As stated, true black is seldom seen in nature, and because of its strong contrast with other colors, it’s often the first thing that’s seen when scanning an area. I remember a report about various types of camouflage clothing conducted some years ago, and how the first thing about the wearer that was spotted were his black boots.

Something I didn’t recognize until a couple of years ago is how well a disruptive camo pattern works to delay “seeing” an individual even at very close distances. During one exercise the role-playing team leader who was dressed in MultiCam crouched behind a counter, but was otherwise in plain view in a school classroom. When I quickly peeked over the counter, the disruptive pattern of his clothing caused a brief, but noticeable delay in my identifying him as an armed individual.

That experience convinced me of the value of wearing such clothing even when its colors and patterns don’t blend into the background, such as in an urban setting. I.e., I believe it would be faster for a BG to pick up and track an officer making a room entry who was dressed all in black than in a camo outfit.

Went to a sniper school some years ago taught by a couple SF guys that at the time had just come back from Afghanistan. They did a drill with us using just old school woodland camo. At 300 yards without optics depending on the backround the camo made the person nearly invisible with the naked eye. Then the subject put on a black beanie and immediately stood out. It was a great drill demonstrating why camo was important. The digital camo was even more effective.

I have also felt that black had no place on an entry team or any special response team. It simply duplicates an old school T-19 target, by contrasting against nearly any backround other than an area absent of any light, which is seldom the situation in urban combat situations. We have finally adopted Multicam, it has only taken 20 years.

We've done a bunch of experiments here with a variety of camo and truly, the results are quite fascinating. If you want to be seen aside from wearing blaze orange or emergency services yellow, black and blue are your path to celebrity status! The best general-purpose stuff we've found for our mixture of terrain and cover is Marine Marpat and German Flecktarn. Of course, there are "photographic" commercial, Fudd-ready, terrain/cover-specific camos that are really amazing at totally obscuring a wearer, but for the most part, they are so specific they wouldn't adequately serve as a general purpose military uniform that would have to serve in variable environments.

Multicam is good stuff, but in practice and at any distance, it washes out to a simple olive drab. Funny thing tho, that old GI WW2 olive drab isn't too bad a stuff overall. Interesting the Israelis do not issue a camo uniform but rather a solid color approaching the old OD of yesteryear. This is logical, tho, as the principle of camouflage is large patches for distance, small patches for up close. Mutually exclusive!

My recollection of the '70's Rhodesian studies I referred to above is that camo clothing was determined to be of indeterminate value as long as the color was basically appropriate to the background. Folds and wrinkles when the wearer was in various positions caused adequate shadowing and breakup of outline when the man was in proximity or surrounded by ground cover. Out in the open I suppose it might not serve as well.

And then we have the creative Navy "camo" which isn't designed to hide the wearer, but rather to hide grease stains and filth that can't readily be washed out! Genius if you think about it, since Navy personnel don't need, for the most part, a uniform to hide them and of course for landing parties and ground units Marine uniforms are available. Interestingly, the Navy choice has historical roots in the German Panzer unit uniforms of WW2 which were black for the exact same reason, to hide grease and oil stains. What goes around comes around.

quote:

Originally posted by 3/4Flap:
And then we have the creative Navy "camo" which isn't designed to hide the wearer, but rather to hide grease stains and filth that can't readily be washed out!

The blue digital camo was also perfect for making the wearer effectively invisible if they were to fall overboard.

quote:

Genius if you think about it, since Navy personnel don't need, for the most part, a uniform to hide them and of course for landing parties and ground units Marine uniforms are available.

Navy Corpsmen attached to Marine units wear MARPAT. But other Navy personnel wear different Navy-specific digital camo patterns, know as AOR.

There's a desert (AOR1) and woodland (AOR2) version. They're digital like MARPAT, but different colors and patterns.



In fact, the Navy is ditching the blue camo NWU I altogether, and transitioning fully to the NWU III (in AOR2 woodland camo), which will now be their standard uniform, with the NWU II (in AOR1 desert camo) available for those ashore in applicable areas.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,

Based on what I saw while spending much time at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (formerly the National Naval Medical Center) for a couple of weeks recently, the “blueberry” camo uniform is not common these days. The “working” uniforms of most naval personnel I saw had a so-called “digital” design in a couple of shades of green, a bit of light tan, and some black:

https://www.navytimes.com/news...ut-starts-this-fall/

The working uniform in shades of blue that is worn with black boots reportedly will be no longer authorized as of 1 October 2019. I most commonly saw its still being worn by security personnel.

The patterns of any camouflage design tend to blend together at distance. When I talked to some designers in the late 1970s, they said that the goal was for patterns to be effective at “middle” distances. The “woodland” pattern of the BDU during the last years of my Army career tended to blend to almost black unless the uniform was heavily wear and washing faded. In my local environment MultiCam is an extremely effective pattern at close to a couple of hundred yards (I haven’t really seen how it looks beyond that).

Added: RogueJSK explained it much better than I.
Another odd military pattern is one I saw a few times on Air Force personnel: a faded-looking design based on the Vietnam era “tiger stripe.” At any distance at all I appears to be a uniform light gray. Based on its rarity, I assume it is another pattern on the way out.

thanks for the current info guys!

that last pic rogue posted highlights something indicative of a good trend; the elimination of black.

i have two labs. one black, one chocolate. i work them in the woods, mountains and there is no comparison, the black one stands out.....even at night! at night the chocolate model can stand here and there and thither AND EVEN MOVE and he is far more difficult to pic out than his daughter who is black. curious and maybe counter-intuitive, but true just the same.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Another odd military pattern is one I saw a few times on Air Force personnel: a faded-looking design based on the Vietnam era “tiger stripe.” At any distance at all I appears to be a uniform light gray. Based on its rarity, I assume it is another pattern on the way out.

Are you talking about the ABU digital tiger stripe?

It was the Air Force's attempt to copy the Army's UCP camo, with a blueish/gray/tan digital camo, just with a different "tiger stripe"-style pattern.



As of last year, it's being phased out in favor of Multicam-style OCP, and will be fully ditched by 2021.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Are you talking about the ABU digital tiger stripe?

Yes. I only saw it indoors and around the buildings outside, but why anyone thought it would be an effective design to help someone hide is beyond me.

A comment about the Army ACU design from a Special Forces NCO was that it was good if one was trying to hide in a gravel pit.

I think it was more a case of "me too" than an actual serious attempt at developing an effective camo pattern.

In the 2000s, everyone else was getting cool new digital patterns, and someone(s) high up didn't want their beloved Air Force to still be stuck wearing "old" M81 Woodland.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
A comment about the Army ACU design from a Special Forces NCO was that it was good if one was trying to hide in a gravel pit.

Or on your grandmother's sofa.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I think it was more a case of "me too" than an actual serious attempt at developing an effective camo pattern.

No doubt.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I think it was more a case of "me too" than an actual serious attempt at developing an effective camo pattern.

In the 2000s, everyone else was getting cool new digital patterns, and someone(s) high up didn't want their beloved Air Force to still be stuck wearing "old" M81 Woodland.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
A comment about the Army ACU design from a Special Forces NCO was that it was good if one was trying to hide in a gravel pit.

Or on your grandmother's sofa.

HaHaHa!!!

Spot on!

From what .mil site did you copy that experimental design?

quote:

Originally posted by 3/4Flap:
that last pic rogue posted highlights something indicative of a good trend; the elimination of black.

The Navy's woodland AOR2 still incorporates black, as does the USMC's Woodland MARPAT.

I believe black was included in small quantities to aid in night vision camo. Otherwise, the camo patterns wash out to a solid color.

FOr example, here are four patterns. Of those, US4CES and MARPAT include black sections, while Kryptek and Multicam do not.

Note that the only real disruptive effect is provided by the black sections.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
In my local environment MultiCam is an extremely effective pattern at close to a couple of hundred yards (I haven’t really seen how it looks beyond that).

I've been really impressed with how well Multicam works in Arkansas. It's a great all-season, all-around camo pattern around here, working equally well during the green spring, dry summer, colorful fall, and dead winter. I have several sets of surplus Multicam-like uniforms (US OCP, British MTP, etc.) that I wear for hunting. Cheaper, better quality, more rugged, and arguably better performing than commercial hunting camo clothing.

Surplus uniforms in the old US DCU three color desert camo and British Desert DPM camo also work well around here about 2/3 of the year, during both the dry part of summer as well as during the dead portion of late fall, winter, and the beginnings of spring, and even still do a passable job during the greener portions of the year.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I believe black was included in small quantities to aid in night vision camo.

Good pictures; thanks.

You probably remember the early smocks that were intended as overgarments for wear to help avoid detection by night vision devices of the 1970s-80s. As I recall they were marked with a sort of grid pattern. It was never clear to me what they were supposed to do, but I assumed it had something to do with how the devices formed the visual image.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I believe black was included in small quantities to aid in night vision camo.

Good pictures; thanks.

You probably remember the early smocks that were intended as overgarments for wear to help avoid detection by night vision devices of the 1970s-80s. As I recall they were marked with a sort of grid pattern. It was never clear to me what they were supposed to do, but I assumed it had something to do with how the devices formed the visual image.

"It was never clear to me what they were supposed to do,"

Make it harder to see you, what else?



Sorry, couldn't resist. I never understood what the grid did either!!

Anyone?

quote:

Originally posted by 3/4Flap:
Make it harder to see you, what else?

Ah, yes. I can resist anything except temptation.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
You probably remember the early smocks that were intended as overgarments for wear to help avoid detection by night vision devices of the 1970s-80s. As I recall they were marked with a sort of grid pattern. It was never clear to me what they were supposed to do, but I assumed it had something to do with how the devices formed the visual image.

Ah... "Desert Night Camo". Seen briefly around Desert Storm, and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. (Good riddance.)




Best as I can tell, it was designed to obscure the wearer by roughly mimicking the heavily gridded/pixelated view provided by 1960s/1970s-era technology NV devices, plus adding in some bits of disruptive blobs for good measure.

The problem stems from the fact that this desert night vision pattern was designed as part of a development program that also came up with the 6 color desert camo uniform, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This program was shelved in the early/mid 1970s when the US decided they didn't have much of a need for a desert camo at the time.

The program was then later pulled out of mothballs a decade or so later and rushed into production in the early/mid 1980s, when the US decided they did, in fact, have a need for a desert camo pattern.

But the issue was that, by the time it was fielded in the mid-1980s, the idea and design behind the night camo pattern was based on research about Soviet NV capabilities from 1960s... A full two decades old.

Thus, even when used against a foe using older NV tech at the time of its eventual field use in the late 1980s/early 1990s, its usefulness was debatable. And when used against more modern contemporary NVGs from the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was worse than useless. In fact, when used with the newer NV tech of the time, it made the wearer stand out more than standard camo patterns!

Likewise, the accompanying 6 color desert camo had issues, being designed around rocky, darker deserts like the Mojave in California instead of the lighter, sandier deserts of the Middle East where they would actually end up being used, and where the pattern wasn't as effective.

As a result, the 6 color desert camo was rather quickly replaced by the better-suited 3 color DCU pattern, and desert night camo faded into obscurity. So both patterns from this much-delayed development program turned out to be flops.


Below is a shot of the original Natick desert camo testing from the late 1960s/early 1970s, showing these original patterns, a full 10-20ish years before the designs were actually fielded.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,