I hear a bunch of retards say retarded things about camouflage. So this will be the first article on the topic and its mostly going to be wasting your time by explaining things that you probably already knew. But to talk in greater detail at a later date requires me to talk in broad strokes first. Camouflage as it applies to anything you or I care about means disruptive. There is camouflage out there that is NOT disruptive. This doesn’t mean its not effective. Realtree and Mossy Oak type photorealistic camouflage is not disruptive. It is meant to be effective when sitting still, like a ghetto ass version of a ghillie suit. If you saw a bush get up and start walking you would take notice of it. If some indescribable blob of nondescript colors started moving you would probably think twice about what it was. This is the basis for disruptive camouflage. You aren't meant to look like a bush, you are meant to look like nothing, meant to be looked over. The main problem with non-disruptive patterns is as I said before, it is entirely ineffective when moving. Patterns like mossy oak are also limited to one highly specific environment, which is why they sell 30,000 versions of it. Deer season is the same time every year, and you aren't meant to wear your hunting clothes any other time. WAR is a year round affair, and takes place in different environments. Lack of disruption is the main problem with several camouflage patterns variously derided as ineffective. UCP is not bad because of the fact that it is grey. Its bad because it is practically a monotone. This effect is called isoluminance, where at any kind of distance the different colors blend together into one. EMR (digi-flora) may have a better colorway, but has the same problem, anywhere past 10 feet its just a green blob. This is also one of the primary reasons that UCP-D is an effective modification, not because the desert color adds a bunch of help, but because it adds contrast. This is also where black becomes very useful in a pattern. Many pseuds will deride black in camouflage because there is “no black in nature”. Now not only is this not true, but it also isn't the point. If you were to take CADPAT, and replace the black with another green you lose all contrast, and therefore all disruption. Pseuds will ALSO say that black is there to be good at night. Which is why they praise multicam black as a good nighttime pattern. Its not. Black actually stands out more at night, and if you think logically, if you blend in with a tree during the day, you will blend in with the same tree at night. However, black is an effective color under the near-infrared spectrum. NIR basically views the world in greyscale, which makes black just as important if not more important, as it generates great contrast. A 100% black pattern has no contrast. So, from this we can extrapolate 2 things which are important to disruptive camouflage. | Colorway, and contrast. If you go around wearing grey in the forest, you will be seen, and if you go around looking like a green blob in the forest, you will be seen. Having no contrast can be as bad as having the wrong colors, just depending on how egregious your colorway is. There are many techniques for achieving this disruption. The oldest was called brushstroke, I'm sure you can figure out why. This family of camouflage was originally hand painted onto fabric, later being dyed at the factory. This spawned several other camouflage families, DPM, and French lizard, which led to tiger stripe. Later patterns were able to come about as commercial dye rollers could produce larger patterns on an industrial scale. The Woodland pattern family originated this way, just using rough edged shapes which interlocked with one another. Duck hunter derived patterns were similar, but the patterns were not interlocking, instead being smaller shapes printed onto a background color, much like rocks sitting on a beach. Splinter patterns were much like woodland but were geometric rather than free form. Flecktarn patterns are where the first major innovation comes in, and where more explanation is required. Camouflage patterns are generally calibrated to work at a certain distance, if the pattern is too small it cant be perceived at the required distance. Too large and the whole figure is easily discerned. Properly sized it will completely break up the silhouette. Flecktarn was the first instance of a multi-scale pattern. Where larger shapes were composed of smaller shapes, the one size handing off to the other as the observer drew closer. This rendered it effective at both close and long range. Now, around this same time is where the first use of computer aids in camouflage generation were utilized. The United States trialing a pattern known as Dual-Tex both on infantry uniforms and vehicles. It was a short lived test, but was indicative of things to come. Digital camouflage patterns and their famous blocky shapes were not utilized for any pragmatic purpose. They were shaped that way because it was all the computers of the time were capable of reliably generating. This technique was used because it produced an impeccable multi-scale pattern. CADPAT was the first, followed closely by MARPAT and later UCP. The technique has fallen off in recent years, but nearly every pattern made since has been computer aided in its design. Multicam and its derivatives could not produce its trademark smears without computer assistance. Older patterns still work fine, but not utilizing a multi-scale pattern puts you behind the curve in one way or another. Technically speaking, any camouflage rendered with the aid of computers is a digital pattern, but I'm willing to accept the common definition if you are. In a later article I will start quoting primary sources for effective distance of different patterns. But this is just an overview. |
