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 found wanting because they don't work under IR (e.g. the soldier shines against the background). That sounds like they're using the wrong dyes; surely a decent design methodology would lead to such problems being remedied by incremental improvement?
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.
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.
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 spent on building superior weapons, armor, and of course training. Camo is a very small optimization in comparison and when the Army and Air Force decided to change up their BDU patterns, it was viewed by me and my fellow service members as largely a public image stunt. ("Look everyone, we're modern!")
Edit: to be clear, I'm only referring to uniforms... snipers and such use camouflage netting for example that is tailored to their exact location and can be extremely effective at "hiding in plain sight."
>>In combat, camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible
Current military member here. It is also the first line of defense against fratricide. It means your friends can tell you from the not-friends. A distinct pattern, unique to your organization, is what stops aircraft from dropping on you. So as current patterns trickle out into private hands, eventually every military organization needs to update its look.
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 cameras, some changes in lighting and it would have been evident.
Moreover, it's reasonable to be suspect in whether an organization that can't handle such a basic R&D task is going to be able to handle the more complicated things.
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.
> camouflage is really the VERY last line of defense possible
Doesn't it go: 'don't be seen, if you're seen don't be acquired, if you're acquired don't be hit, if you're hit don't be penetrated, if you're penetrated don't be killed'? Camouflage ('don't be seen') is the first layer on the onion, not the last!
I'm sure everyone has a story like this, but I was in the Army back when they had the green and black blobby camouflage, and we were doing a training exercise against some California National Guard unit. My squad leader and I were at a forward observation point, got bored, and decided to infiltrate them. We ended up behind their lines under some kind of evergreen tree with branches hanging to the ground, so a bit dark, but broad daylight otherwise. So some guy from the "enemy" side peeked underneath the tree, stared straight at us, not three feet away, then turned around and left. (Their side was wearing shirts inside-out so we could tell each other apart.) I guess I did my face paint OK that day.
It's hard to interpret those Navy blueberry uniforms as anything but pointless optics and possibly inter-service ego nonsense between the decision makers involved. A uniform that doesn't blend in with ships, docks, or beaches, but is actually a serious hindrance in a person overboard situation. Oh and it's about as fireproof as a grease soaked rag.
Thankfully rationality eventually prevailed, but not before wasting 100's of millions, a portion of which was out of pocket for sailors.
Good camo is broadband. Camo nets, ghillie suits help spread and dissipate a thermal signature, making it more difficult to pick up from the noise. And unless you have a JWST and know exactly where to point it (and obviously the whole idea of snipers is that you don't know), good luck trying to find a human head-sized target that's a klick away from you.
> With thermal imaging, do snipers still rely on camouflage?
Does everyone on a battlefield have thermal imaging? Even if there's a technology X that can defeat Y, if X can't be deployed widely, then X can still be useful.
Not everyone; but at about $1-2K per unit these days, it is increasingly available even to third-world militaries, such as the Taliban.
In Ukraine, it's one of the things that are often crowdfunded by either side, along with NVDs and drones. Of course, when they are in short supply, they usually go to the units that can use the most effectively, such as recon & sabotage groups (диверсионно-разведывательная группа; not sure what's the proper English term for that, but it's basically guys who work behind enemy lines). So even if not everybody has them, the guys who are the most likely to mess you up probably do.
In English those would fall under the vague umbrella of "special forces".
The most famous from the USA are Navy Seals, followed by Army Rangers, but every branch of the military has its own special forces. And other countries militaries do as well.
The one whose official remit probably looks most like the group that you describe are Air Force Special Reconnaissance (SR). It is their mission to deploy deep behind enemy lines, figure out enemy operations, and work with other units in any area of the military to take out high value targets. (For example by calling in air strikes or artillery.)
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.
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.
Yeah for a fraction of the cost in complexity, weight and issues with consumables a suppressor does all of what they were talking about and more. The US army is in theory going to a new rifle and issuing suppressors to every (frontline) infantry unit with the NGSW contract.
(We'll see how widely the new system and everything actually gets deployed but it was an important part of the whole program at least)
Why not just build one in? I guess I'm accustomed to assault rifles having flash suppressors because the one that I've actually handled and lugged around and shot with, the Valmet RK 62, does have a suppressor built in, a distinctive feature [1].
I'm not seeing anything about a built in sound suppressor just a flash suppressor which is a fairly common feature on modern assault rifles and their civilian variants. You don't generally build in a suppressor because they're technically wear items as the hot gases will slowly erode the baffles over time. That plus their extra weight and cost meant most militaries only issued them to units that were built for stealth missions in the past.
A bit yeah though they went from 20-inch M16s at the beginning of the GWOT to 14.5 or less as the main weapon so there was space to slap a suppressor on but you'd give up the maneuverability gains of losing that length. The NGSW winner is pretty short barreled before the suppressor is added and it required particularly spicy (high pressure) ammo to still be effective at that short of a length.
You’re basically describing “muzzle brakes and flash suppressors, but with more components to refill/repair”
Separately, using the force of the round (either via a gas tube or via direct rearward motion) to propel the action of the firearm isn’t really an AK47 thing, it’s common to all semi automatic rifles and predates the AK47 by quite a while.
"propel the action of the firearm isn’t really an AK47 thing, it’s common to all semi automatic rifles and predates the AK47 by quite a while.
"
Kalashnikov invented the easiest way to manufacture this behavior... This is the reason its the most heinous of weapons.
I am talking about something different. And thats OK.
-
I am talking about a specific method of funneling muzzle output to funnel through your suppression...
I am talkingabout a hydro-enahnaced flash press which does a certain thing. Please talk about what that certain thing is.
--
The most environmentally way to reduce muzzle flash. Cloud of water vapor as an expulsion of the muzzle such that it interacts with the blast easily enough to expel the right amount of water vapor through the expulsion chamber as the expression continues through the valve, (barrel) and its in-flame-ant mitigated by the entrenchment water vapor cloud to expel the munition, but still keep other perams in check?
AK47 isn’t the first rotating bolt gas piston carbine with muzzle devices with booster effect, it’s just an evolution of Sturmgewehr concept and one of the first generation assault rifle so retroactively categorized.
I’ll skip over lubed suppressor concept as I don’t know more than Google tells us :p
In all honesty, there isnt much room to improve the actions of modern assault rifles. There are dozens of post-stoner improvements that have bern tried. Millions have been spent on them. They have all been shelved as to complex or cumbersome. The gas-operated rotating bolt is so elegant, so reliable, that fundimental improvements are hard to imagine.
Adding water to the equation? Rust, mud, weight, boiling ... you would need some radical improvements to justify such added complexity.
I suspect there should be a lot of room for improvements, just that we are not able to perceive them without first- or second-world war going on.
I remember reading about importance of a newfangled barrel free-floating construction on carbines, soon after the Afghan war started. The examples used at that time were kludgy top-rail secured things supposedly used by mysterious SEALs guys. Later I saw Crane stock for the pair of chemical lights.
Today, those are slim M-LOK with rail on top and secured to the barrel nut, HEL-STARs, and MOE SL stocks. Oh and Russian Army standard infantry rifles are now cheap AKs with f*’ng buffer tubes, and G36 now has short aluminum mounts to avoid floppy carrying handle issues(“polymer degradation” fiasco).
What caused all those changes were clearly the wars.
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.
Muzzle flash is a HUGE problem with modern ar-15 style rifles. You won't get 100% efficiency until something like 22-26 inch barrels, but that's a VERY long gun to be using (and even those have muzzle flash).
With all the urban combat, there's a push toward shorter and maneuverable. In something short like the 10.5" M4A1 CQBR, flash becomes a much bigger problem (especially in dark rooms where it can be positively blinding to the shooter).
A suppressor helps with this issue, but it also starts adding back length to the gun (somewhat defeating the purpose).
300 blackout supposedly helps the problem (I've never shot it from a SBR) and also has better short-range (esp subsonic) ballistics compared to 5.56, but it too has muzzle flash.
The newly selected Army XM5 rifle and cartridge were designed for super-high pressures and achieving high speeds in a short barrel likely causing even more muzzle flash. Thankfully, this rifle is going to be suppressed for everyone by default. Unfortunately, it's super heavy (and that's without the super-heavy optics), has less ammo per magazine, and despite the goal, is still going to be blocked by higher-level body armor, and is still 36" in a SBR configuration (for comparison, the Israeli CTAR-21 is 30% shorter at just 25" providing rifle firepower in a SMG package).
My reading is that snipers are a very specialized soldier type that can benefit from cammo, but it's way less useful for other soldier types.
A sniper lies prone for a long time, with really heavy cammo (think netting, foliage, etc). Staying put is a big deal.
Regular soldiers constantly move about, which means their cammo has to be more practical and lightweight, and is also less effective due to said movement.
How much of this is due to the US military spending the past generation dunking on goatherds? I imagine the pattern on your uniform is entirely irrelevant when up against an equivalent technology adversary with proper artillery and air power. On the other hand having the guy with the AK be 20% more likely to miss his first shot sounds like it’s worth doing some research on your clothing’s appearance.
Speaking of, is traditional garb at all effective from a tactical standpoint?
> 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.
The ability to easily print and create those patterns has likely improved over the years to where it's cheap enough to be worth the mild improvements vs the cost of the printing of the uniforms.
Plus, like another commenter said camouflage is a last to second to last line of defense. Most units aren't moving stealthily in close proximity to their enemy and those that do adopt better camouflage techniques like ghillie suits or using terrain to hide while staying still (eg: waiting to ambush another group).
As a Finn, my conception of warfare is probably biased towards a specific type that happens in woodlands with short sightlines and lots of natural concealment. Direct-fire engagement distances tend to be short, infantry tactics are informed by the desire to get as close as possible without being seen, and by unit movement (possibly under aerial surveillance) while giving away as little information as possible.
I do think that the Finnish M05 woodland camo [1] is one of the best in the world =)
Yeah mine is probably colored by being from the US and it's recent wars where overall stealth wasn't a huge consideration because the force disparity was so great
Finland also has some interesting doctrine in anti-tank which leads to fun images like [0] of people absolutely COVERED in anti-tank mines or launchers. Part of being next to a much larger country I guess.
Yep, and the Finnish doctrine has been pretty much vindicated by the Ukraina invasion (although a full-scale land assault against Finland has long been seen as a rather improbable scenario, that hasn’t stopped us from hoarding AT weaponry and maintaining a large artillery force).
Those things are hellishly heavy and being "that guy" that has to carry them is a form of punishment too.
These particular photos look like comic relief.
Those yellow anti-tank mines are 10 kg each, which means that dude would be hauling at least 160 kg = 353 lbs extra weight. Doable perhaps but definitely not used in combat.
Max loadout is more like 4 of those anti-tank mines hanging off your gear and carrying 4 in your hands, and that will guaranteed wipe you out. Hauling 4 total any longer distance is the usual amount.
Max loadout of the APILAS anti-tank rocket launcher thing is usually two on your back, and that'll practically immobilize you in Finnish terrain.
I thought this hearkened back to the days of banners. You gotta know who's on who's side for any sort of effective early modern warfare in europe, otherwise you'll be shooting your own more than you'd like
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.
Note that this seems to be more particularly about natural forms of camouflage / etc., as opposed to military camouflage used by humans. But the two areas are clearly related.
Regardless of what you call it, it does appear that there is some science that goes into at least some aspects of this. See, for example:
So basically, "if I make them fractal they look like patterns in nature, and if I scale tiny pixel fractals on screen up to the width of a bolt of cloth they still look like fractal patterns in nature, and if I get it right the details end up about the same scale as details in nature, mostly" kind of thing?
> "Pixels have minimal impact on the ambient vision but a large impact on the focal cone causing further delay as the brain attempts to process the increased detail, when pixelation in camouflage is done correctly (color and scale) the brain will confuse the background noise with the pixels, removing the anomaly as a threat or delaying the identification of a threat. (6)"
I think squares are easier to fit together than dots and probably triangles.
If you used dots you have irregular spaces between them. This may or may not be a good thing, but it is certainly going to be different to the dots themselves.
Hexagons could work though.
But judging by the linked site and some Googling, I'm going to say no one knows for sure because no one has tested it.
Pixelation by itself does not produce any camo effect. It just happens to be easier and cheaper to produce fractal camo patterns on clothing out of pixels - it can be literally printed. And at any range at which the pattern is likely to work anyway, the individual pixels aren't really visible.
CADPAT works terrifyingly well in the temperate forests of Canada during spring/summer. I had a chance to go try and to spot people wearing CADPAT in the early 2000's and it was a royal pain to try and see them compared to the olive drab or even the US woodland patterns.
Just a fun aside: when Canada invaded Afghanistan, there was a lack of the arid variant of CADPAT. It left soldiers to land in the brown and tan desert wearing vivid green camouflage designed for summer in the Canadian rain forests.
>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 found wanting because they don't work under IR (e.g. the soldier shines against the background). That sounds like they're using the wrong dyes; surely a decent design methodology would lead to such problems being remedied by incremental improvement?
It was fixed AFAIK. IIRC issued CADPAT clothing were controlled items in 2000's because they had the the treatments designed to work against near infrared. Civilian CADPAT lacked those treatments so companies like Tru Spec[1] could sell it on the open market. There were other teething issues I am aware of; the dyes bleeding into splotches instead of the digital pattern as called for, as well as fading issues after laundering. Fixed of course but it took some iterations.
[1] I just double checked, Tru Spec never sold it. There were some smaller outfits in Canada that produced CADPAT available on the civilian market for short time; Drop Zone Tactical out of Edmonton for sure was one. Rumor mill is that it was material made by Consoltex under military contract that failed to meet the military's specifications and sold off to licensed DND manufactures to recoup costs.
> Just a fun aside: when Canada invaded Afghanistan, there was a lack of the arid variant of CADPAT. It left soldiers to land in the brown and tan desert wearing vivid green camouflage designed for summer in the Canadian rain forests.
This is a (kinda funny) plotline in Generation Kill.
> CADPAT works terrifyingly well in the temperate forests of Canada during spring/summer. I had a chance to go try and to spot people wearing CADPAT in the early 2000's and it was a royal pain to try and see them compared to the olive drab or even the US woodland patterns.
That reminds me of a story I heard about the "chocolate chip" US desert camo used in Desert Storm in 1991. Basically, the US designed their "desert camo to be effective in the desert of the American Southwest. But we ended up actually fighting in the Iraq/Saudi/Kuwaiti border region instead of the American Southwest, and it turns out that the deserts are different enough that the camo was not particularly effective.
> Just a fun aside: when Canada invaded Afghanistan, there was a lack of the arid variant of CADPAT. It left soldiers to land in the brown and tan desert wearing vivid green camouflage designed for summer in the Canadian rain forests.
That reminds me of the times we chose to wear snow pants but not jackets, because there was snow on the ground but not much elsewhere.
What was worse, CADPAT or UCP? I couldn't find it in the article. Instinct is that CADPAT was worse, but UCP was just that style without the contrast thus negating one of it's features (disrupting the human shape with high contrast).
Thanks. Is MARPAT what the Canadian soldiers showed up to Afghanistan in?
Edit: looks like the wore the forest green stuff to Afghanistan. The only articles I can find suggests they did it on purpose, to stand out for peace keeping reasons, but that could easily be damage control. Anyone know the real story? GP suggests they just didn't have an arid design at the time (which I would believe).
I can't comment on Canadian forces, but I can, with some reasonable level of confidence, say that some number of U.S. forces arrived with old forest green BDU pattern (despite the existence and previous use of the "chocolate chip" pattern) simply because that's what we had.
Can't speak to exactly why they didn't have it, but it was not a deliberate decision ("It's my uniform," said Master Cpl. Perry Morrow. "I'd rather wear this than no clothes at all.") from a relevant CBC article at the time about it(1))
For years afterwards whenever there was a discussion about equipment and supporting troops, it was brought up as an argument in favour of more purchases.
CADPAT is the Canadian camo. MARPAT is the American USMC camo. The difference is that MARPAT has a lot of browns and tans in it, while CADPAT is mostly green; the pattern is the same otherwise.
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 target as well.
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.
Practically all of the non-bleach "whitening" detergents work by adding UV reflectivity. Humans perceive the result as brighter, without being able to accurately say why. Plenty of animals see UV light, and it wouldn't surprise me if militaries had wideband sensors beyond just IR.
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.
Very real issue. My uncle used to be a big hunter (he died a couple years ago), and could never see other hunters wearing the required blaze orange, but when they were wearing camouflage he had no problem seeing them in the woods.
I have lots of other stories about the wierd things color blind people see and don't see. (My sisters are color blind, none of my family sees colors exactly the same, makes for some weird situations)
Survivorship bias perhaps, on the vest products (not the animals). Only the blaze orange vests that don't trigger the animals get commercial success; word will get around what the "good hunting products" are. Probably works by having the vest be similar brightness as the camo, once you combine the reds and greens.
The answers to your first paragraph is in another part of the series:
> Now we can address the Micropattern - digital pixels. These are required to add background noise and texture matching with the background and this is designed to fool with the focal area of the eye - when you are looking directly at or close to the target to make it more difficult to recognize what you are looking at.
The following text seems to be mostly talking about things that have nothing to do with square pixels, it just sounds like that's what was how the dude programmed his generating algorithm. To the best of my reading, the goals he achieved with the patterns don't interact with the squareness.
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.
Until the Javascript cool kids invade your country because the USans elected a guy with a family grudge against your president. Then the Javascript cool kids decide whether to blow you into assorted body parts and pink mist in front of your parents because you tried to help a wounded child.
.... the USans will also come back in 20 years to make a film about how invading your country and blowing you into a pink mist in front of your parents made their solders feel sad.
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-green fleece from ECWCS Gen III (what the Army was wearing), and added the APECS Goretex parka that the Marine Corps was wearing, only in the ABU tiger-stripe rather than MARPAT.
Most of the actual battlefield airmen (i.e. the people who might reasonably expect to find themselves in combat conditions where camouflage could help like combat controller, TACP, PJ) didn't wear it anyway.
As pointed out elsewhere, this is very largely about esprit-de-corps in the context of a military organization, even if your job is actually avionics maintenance or personnel.
It does seem like a huge waste for all the services to have their own completely distinctive utility uniforms though - the pendulum is swinging back the other way now with the Army, Air Force and Space Force all back in the redesigned ACU/OCP with stitching color (black/spice-brown/blue) as the service-distinctive element.
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, often as not, are the butts of jokes and not considered at all appealing)
Then again, maybe those old styles only looked good when they were made with nice materials, like wool and heavy waxed canvas, and would look bad with cheap modern synthetics.
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.
> 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 be effective.
Here's another example: why is the military PT (physical training) test varied by sex and age? If it was only about combat effectiveness, presumably there'd be 1 set of values that determine if someone had sufficient fitness relative to the rigors of combat (or whatever their job requires).
In addition to things other people have said there's a lot of roles that aren't combat so increasing the number of women who can qualify can fill out those roles (logistics, the reams of sundry clerical work, maintenance, etc) where physical strength isn't as critical helps fill out a volunteer army.
There's a concept called 'tooth-to-tail ratio' which is the ratio of combat personnel to non-combat personnel in an army. The modern US army has a tooth-to-tail ratio of about ~1:8. This isn't necessarily a great correlation to physically demanding versus not-physically-demanding jobs, it does illustrate how tiny the front-line portion of the military actually is.
That was the concept I was gesturing at but I couldn't remember the name. Militaries in general but the US in particular are predominantly logistics organizations with a lethal last mile delivery focus. It's part of why they're so good for responding to natural disasters in far flung island countries, they're used to delivering goods with little infrastructure at the destination.
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.
It was a diagnostic test. Like how a loss of fuel efficiency is a sign that something is wrong with an engine, if someone can’t meet the standard something has gone wrong. Which is why it was treated as a pure pass fail.
It’s a standards test, where failing can potentially get you kicked out.
While also used as a diagnostic to let you know if you’re slipping, its primary and only stated purpose is to uphold an objective standard.
This makes variations by age and sex concessions to that goal, rather than design elements.
The standards test is different. Occupational Physical Assessment Test results are Unqualified, Moderate, Significant, or Heavy which is then used to decide if someone meets an appropriate standard.
Meanwhile the Army would sometimes retain people incapable of passing the old age and gender standard. As an extreme example people with missing limbs could be retained.
Former US sailor here.
The “camouflage” blue is no longer in use, but when it was, we jokingly referred to each other as “ocean warriors”.
The reasoning for why this pattern was chosen for working use, was that it hid oil stains and fresh paint really well, letting you wear the uniform longer.
The reality? Some politician or admiral wanted to leave their mark.
In development since 1983, the camo saw no use in the field until it was deployed during the first Gulf War (1990-1991).
The purpose was to disrupt primitive Soviet-era night vision. The grid pattern was intended to interfere with the generated grid used by these devices for targeting.
Even after plenty of research I could find no cases of this pattern ever disrupting anything. By the early 90’s, night vision technology had progressed greatly and this green grid was completely ineffective. There is even some anecdotal evidence it made detection easier!
An interesting macro-variant is the Berlin brigade tank camo pattern, which is surprisingly cool! No idea where that comes into uniform camo pattern history nor how efficient it is, but who cares. It's cool beans.
Dazzle camo wasn't so much a "hide me" camo as it was a "hide data needed to shot me" camo. It was designed to make it harder to estimate heading and speed so it was harder to calculate accurate shots by submarines and naval guns which needed data about the target ship's speed, distance and heading to calculate an accurate shot.
This is true for modern infantry camo, as well - it aims to disrupt the human silhouette at a distance, not only to make it harder to spot, but also to make it harder to aim center mass (can be tricky if the visual border of said mass is all fuzzy and blends into the surroundings!).
It's definitely the final nail in it's widespread use but it was used somewhat up to the end of WW2 though that focused on anti-kamikaze painting in the Pacific theater. Japan was several years behind the rest of the world on radar so it stuck around longer in the Pacific too before that transition to anti-kamikaze but even there by the end of the war Japan was using radar fire-control.
My guess would be that the thinking behind it was that in urban environments you have more straight vertical/horizontal lines (houses, roads etc.) and thus wavy camouflage patterns would stand out more from the background.
With no knowledge what so ever my gut reaction is to simply point to nature. Leaves get eaten/bitten/broken/ripped, a branch might be in front of another adding depth with similar patterns, rocks and sand in a desert can vary sharply at different focal depths, urban environments can have dozens of materials in use along with random detritus and objects at various focal depths.
Well, that ghillie suit doesn't look pixelated to me - it just looks like it has quite a few straight-sided polygons in it.
Actually, that's what's bugging me most about this camo made from regular square blocks: it looks really easy for a recogniser to spot. No AI <spit>, an old-fashioned neural network would be enough to recognise edges, and then spot squares on a grid.
[Edit] Yeah, I get that your average stag deer doesn't have access to thermal imaging and neural networks. But this is military camo, not deerstalking camo.
>[Edit] Yeah, I get that your average stag deer doesn't have access to thermal imaging and neural networks. But this is military camo, not deerstalking camo.
The average grunt doesn't have access to thermal imaging or neural networks either, they might have a crappy Vietnam-era flashlight, their weapon system, and a reasonable compromise between number of rounds and weight as spare mags. Especially when that grunt is a "third world" fighter. Pixelated camo like ARPAT saw the bulk of its current use in Afghanistan and Iraq where the most sophisticated thing the enemy might have is a pair of binoculars and a cellphone.
The pixilation, to the human eye, is much more natural than large splotches of a few colors because terrain/vegetation/buildings in natural light have all sorts of depth and shadow variation, the pixilation is much harder to pick out than fairly large blotches of random color.
MARPAT is a very well documented case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPAT In its case, it was chosen because the blocks actually blend very well into environments when viewed from a distance.
I doubt they have to be pixelated. They have a higher resolution than the other patterns which introduces more noise, which is probably good. But I would guess that smooth patterns would work too. It just doesn't matter since it would look the same from longer distances.
If I'm reading this correctly, the decision process that resulted in the horribly-ineffective UCP pattern amounts to: "We want one pattern. So let's pick one color from the best camo patterns in every environment [the only one that has good NIR performance], and the result will somehow work well!" Which is... yowzers.
(For what it's worth, the Multicam pattern, which is slightly modified to the OCP pattern now in use by the US Army/Air Force, manages to do a better job than the UCP pattern at actually being universal camo, and it's not even the best of the tests.)
The NIR requirements means you can almost see how the decision might be justifiable... but that no one actually tested the resulting pattern as a check? I mean, one of the most salient facts about human color processing is that we evaluate colors based on their surrounding context, so even if individual colors work well, you would need to check their performance in their context to make sure they still work well.
There is an argument out there that the UCP camo patterns were more to make US troops distinct from enemy forces and reduce friendly fire than to provide any advantage for camouflage purposes. That it made American troops extremely identifiable by the distinct look of UCP.
I don't know if I believe it, but it makes a little sense. What would have made more sense is if they had allowed tinting it to different colors based on the region. There is an example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WckhOUMfHk
I'm in the Air force, and while not relevant to actual camouflage ability, I can personally say that OCPs look much nicer than the uniforms before. A lot of the old camo patterns looked painfully ugly. And the ability to camouflage isn't too relevant for me anyways, unless I'm trying to blend into chairs/desks.
C'mon, the Army and Marines already give the Air Force enough crap... I can just imagine it now... "Hey Airman Ikea, we need a good desk lamp over here, is that something you can help us with?"
> the decision process that resulted in the horribly-ineffective UCP
> pattern amounts to: "We want one pattern
Just wait until you read how the F-35 was procured. "We want one airplane for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines. Oh, and it had to include parts from almost all NATO allies, even those who we won't sell it to."
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 that’s just the public DOT&E report.
In an unprecedented move, DOT&E is concealing many of the key details of the F-35’s poor performance. For the first time ever, the testing office created a non-public “controlled unclassified information” version of its report, and although there is much overlap between the two versions, the meaningful details about the ever-troubled program are only included in the non-public one.
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 use.
Btw I'm not of the same mindset of the other guy, I'm not gonna call you a "Luddite Reformer" because I saw a YouTube video.
From when I know many of the issues are FUD, but obviously there is real issues and I'd like to better educate myself. But 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.
> 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'd point out that probably the majority of "MIC reptiles" would be opposed to the F35. After all, there are more defense contractors who build competitors to the F35 than there are defense contractors who build the F35. For instance, I distinctly remember watching a "report" on the F35 produces by a Canadian network--I think CBC but I'm not sure--which was a fairly obvious PR hit by Boeing, given that half of the report was basically a sales pitch by Boeing "experts" talking about how great the Super Hornet is.
It's so interesting how luddite Reformers hold such a sway over the usually techno-optimist HN. Turns out that new technology has teething problems, what a shocker.
Wow, my first comment on the thread, consisting entirely of a quote from expert analysts, and already I'm a "luddite Reformer". (Idiosyncratic capitalization also doesn't help you seem balanced and rational.)
This turkey was designed in the 1990s. The contract was awarded in 2001. The first f35 flew in 2006. When will this "technology" no longer be "new"? Presumably it will be some time, since the entire fleet was grounded again last week due to safety concerns.
I think the reason why you're getting some pushback is because we've heard all these before with another aircraft that had similar teething and development problems: the F-15.
The F-15 project was supposed to be a small and light fighter but feature creep" blew the project up into a massively expensive boondoggle. Some of this was due to the fear of the MIG-25; an aircraft we later learned wasn't so scary.
Yet today, the overpriced, chronic cost-overruning F-15 sits at an impressive 109:0 kill to loss ratio, making it the best performing aircraft in the United State's history.
But you would be correct in saying the F-35 is no F-15. It has a stealth coating that is expensive to maintain (this is true for all stealth aircraft). It also flies with a ton of electronics to function as a "sensor network in the sky".
But in many ways, this is similar to the complaints about the F-15 and its (For the time) dizzying array of modern technologies: An advanced lookdown/shootdown radar, support for BVR missiles, IFF, EW and ECM systems all linked to a central computer. Technically other aircraft had these technologies in the 1970s, but none until the F-15 had them all in the same aircraft. Fast-forward a few decades and that "feature creep" doesn't even quality as "bare bones" for any air superiority fighter.
Anyway, if you want a multi-role aircraft without the stealth or sensor network gizmos of the F-35 there's the Gripen E series. Its purchase price is greater than the F-35 but its operating costs are much less. If you don't envision your country's airforce performing too many SEAD missions this tradeoff might make sense... but there's no free lunch!
I believe the list is long of airframes where you could initially find this complaint. I think the F18 had similar concerns after it originally lost its experimental competition to the F16. But the F18 found itself as a capable workhorse for the Navy for decades. Same with the Space Shuttle, etc.
The F-16, incidentally, got loaded to the gills with expensive gizmos after the fact because the Airforce (and other F-16 customers) quickly realized it made the aircraft a far more effective platform.
Generalization (not specialization) was it’s strong point as well as it’s weakness. The reason why it was a design boondoggle was because it had to meet the requirements of many masters. People forget it has a number of DoD missions in addition to the more publicly known NASA missions.
There were plenty of joint NASA/DoD missions that were performed using the Shuttle. Why do you think NASA, an agency built upon freely sharing scientific information, occasionally had classified payloads aboard the Shuttle?
"Between 1982 and 1992, NASA launched 11 shuttle flights with classified payloads, honoring a deal that dated to 1969, when the National Reconnaissance Office—an organization so secret its name could not be published at the time—requested certain changes to the design of NASA’s new space transportation system."[1]
NASA has a long history of working with the military. The first astronauts were all military test pilots (Armstrong gave up his military commission so NASA wouldn’t appear overtly militarized).
They did some classified launches, but none that drew on the extreme specs they had demanded in exchange for helping to fund it.
It was an embarrassment.
Literally no STS launches did. And they were so expensive, it would have been cheaper to build more Hubbles and launch them the regular way than to have done the repair missions.
The Space Shuttle was a disaster for US space presence. US ended up depending on Soyuz!
Now, the X-37 is proving another embarrassment. They can't find enough work for it, so leave it parked in orbit most of the time, pretending to be "on a mission".
Do you mean no STS launches were DoD payloads or do you mean no STS launches required DoD specs? I'm not saying the "cost effectiveness" promise of the Shuttle was met, but there appears to be evidence that neither of the above claims are accurate. For example, STS-38 was a classified DoD payload [1] and there are book chapters dedicated to fact that DoD specs drove the shuttle design [2]. The gist from [3] is
"the support and budget for space decreased, increasing the need for NASA to work closely with the DOD. Their partnership prompted many compromises that were made on the vehicle’s uses and design, which resulted in a broad set of requirements"
Those compromises were largely to accommodate the DoD payload and range requirements. Whether or not they were ultimately necessary we can't know because much of that is classified and unverifiable. But they still drove the design and eroded the cost benefits that NASA wanted.
I'll be more direct: Can you substantiate your claim that the DoD missions did not need those specs? You haven't provided anything other than an opinion at this point.
Because to a laymen, that's an unverifiable claim since those details appear to be classified. Meaning that opinion doesn't amount to much. It's plausible, but I'd need a little more than your opinion to believe it.
I have, of course, no opinion: this is purely a matter of fact. I merely echo complaints by NASA insiders.
I may speculate that their requirements were such as to be able to loft the NSA equivalent of Hubble into a polar orbit, but that by the time STS was flying, they had retired that design and were using rather smaller birds.
In other words, you can't substantiate it. It is therefore not "purely a matter of fact" any more than someone else saying "I heard a guy who heard a NASA guy say those requirements were necessary." At least the latter instance can point to requirements that at least show an intent to do so, your claim is on shakier ground.
It is a matter of fact in that either there were zero missions of such a nature, or there were one or more. I.e., you can refute it by identifying even just one such mission. Posting a list of random DoD missions is not a substitute for that.
People employed at NASA for decades, in a position to know and report even facts not published, that they have had no reason to lie about, say it is true. No one has come forward to say not.
That’s my point. Note I said it was unverifiable. Only one of us is pretending it’s a verifiable fact. I also know manny people who work at NASA, going back from the 1970s to present day. Some were astronauts. Many worked on the shuttle program directly. We seem to have very different ideas about what constitutes a “fact”.
But again, none of that matters unless you can verify your claim. We can just leave it as a known unknown and stop pretending it’s anything different.
> Yet today, the overpriced, chronic cost-overruning F-15 sits at an impressive 109:0 kill to loss ratio, making it the best performing aircraft in the United State's history.
As far as I know you're not a Reformer, which is a proper noun and therefore capitalized, but the "expert analyst" you quoted is. Honestly that tells me enough about your familiarity with this subject
Please link to any source that indicates "Luddite" shouldn't be capitalized or "reformer" should, especially with Capt. Grazier cited as some sort of exemplar of the concept. You've had lots to say ITT but haven't cited a single authority to indicate you're not just making it all up.
The Reformers were/are a group arguing for a particular class of weapons and vehicles in procurement, mostly focusing on relatively low-tech solutions. They’re most famous for their influence in the Fighter Mafia and in the Bradley (see: Pentagon Wars). They’re… controversial.
That one gets capitalized because it’s a proper noun (is that a confusion name? sure).
Luddite strictly should be capitalized as well, but there isn’t any confusion around that one and it isn’t the focus, so I can understand why it wasn’t capitalized. I wouldn’t’ve.
The Reformers aren't even the only group of people involved here. There's a lot of bad press for the F-35 that can be linked back to competing firms such as Boeing. Also, Russian media in particular likes to push stories that make the US look bad. Obviously there are crossovers (e.g. Pierre Sprey, one of the most notorious Reformers, made numerous appearances on RT).
This thing is in service, so conventional wisdom about how long it takes to do stuff before that is irrelevant. From the introduction of my original link:
Despite more than 20 years and approximately $62.5 billion spent so far on research and development alone, program officials still haven’t been able to deliver an aircraft that can fly as often as needed or to demonstrate its ability to perform in combat, which places military personnel in jeopardy.
I would have said the "R&D decade" was the 1990s since JAST began in 1993 and developmental contracts were awarded in 1996, but POGO are conservative in their judgments.
Your first comment was about suspended development, implying you think the system should be part of a continuous R&D cycle. Yet this comment implies you think the system should be outside of development. It's hard to tell what you're criticizing when your points are inconsistent.
I question some of the critiques in your link. For example, they claim the JSFs 61% availability rates are far below the standard of 75-80%. But if you look at published numbers, none of the legacy aircraft F15/F16/F18 variants (which have had decades to work out reliability issues) are above a 60% availability.[1]
What, specifically, are you critical of in terms of the JSF capability? Is that criticism due to what you perceived as mismanaged development or mismanaged priorities (e.g., the tradeoffs of a single platform)? And what is the base rate for comparison?
I don't agree that any of my statements have had any of those implications. USA citizens have the right to complain about any expensive government program. F35 is a $1.7T program, which qualifies as expensive. It's perfectly ordinary to see administrators of non-military programs called before Congress and raked over the coals for spending that seems excessive to some legislator playing to the basest instincts of voters. We recently decided, somehow, that a few billion dollars was too much of a tax credit to justify keeping millions of American children out of poverty. [0] We never see any elected politician complaining about military spending, however.
It's a commonplace that we spend more on the military than the next ten nations put together, most of whom are our allies. That obscures the more amazing fact that over a third of the military spending in the world is spent by USA. Obviously the Pentagon budget should be halved if not quartered, as we were promised before the Saudis dropped the WTC. In such a context, there would be no room for a plane that offers the prospect of more expense instead of more capability. Northrop lobbyists and their employees at think tanks and in the media might be able to dry-lab some "rates" and "figures" to distract from the obvious state of the F35 program. The scale of the disaster cannot be hidden from unbiased investigators. Even if it never makes the evening war media news, those who care to know can consult experts like POGO.
However, if you insist on a criticism in the proper jargon, F35 will never, ever, regardless of how much is spent, be as capable at close air support as the vastly less expensive A10 "Warthog". You can ask any American serviceman who has served on the ground in the last two decades. This isn't the only important role for a military aircraft, but it is an important role.
> We never see any elected politician complaining about military spending, however.
You see it happen all the time. That's part of the broken incentive structure that led to the F35 in the first place. Politicians cancelled or curtailed the B-1, B-2, F-22, A-12, and V-22 just to name a handful off the top of my head. The B-1 and V-22 got uncancelled, and the B-2 and F-22 programs produced significantly fewer aircraft than they originally intended to (thus making these programs more expensive on a per-unit basis since the R&D couldn't be amortized effectively).
Therefore the F35 was intended to fit the requirements of three separate services (protecting it from interservice rivalry and more broadly amortizing the R&D expense) as well as exported to several allies (in order to further amortize R&D and make it safer politically). If there was the political capital necessary for a Harrier successor to be funded on its own, it wouldn't have been rolled into the F35.
> However, if you insist on a criticism in the proper jargon, F35 will never, ever, regardless of how much is spent, be as capable at close air support as the vastly less expensive A10 "Warthog".
This is not actually true. The A-10 is a death trap that is notorious for creating friendly fire casualties. The machine gun isn't effective against armored vehicles, and if you fly the plane low enough to use the machine gun, you're basically committing suicide against modern anti-aircraft weapons. Other than that, it's basically a missile truck, which lots of other planes can do with better accuracy and survivability. Even Ukraine doesn't want it.
I agree with much of what you say. The citizenry have every right to criticize and lobby for their tax dollars to be spent differently. But it appears you've already come to the conclusion that the JSF isn't worthwhile. Put differently, what would the JSF need to show capability-wise in order to change your mind?
I would like to see us spend less in the military if it goes to better use instead. Particularly when commanders are advocating getting rid of programs and Congress keeps them anyway. The US is effectively subsidizing NATOs military capability and mitigating the blowback requires more thoughtful analysis than just slashing the budget. I'm not convinced yet that POGO are the experts worth listening to because they seem a bit out of touch (see my last comment about what they claim the availability should be vs. the parity that matters).
As one of those service members who was supported by the A10 overseas, you're right. Grunts on the ground love the sound of that cannon overhead when close air support is needed. But you are comparing the one very specialized thing the A10 was designed to do. I don’t think it’s a slight to a decathlete to point out there’s faster, specialized sprinters at the Olympics. Stray in any direction away from that and it loses the comparison miserably. Compare avionics, speed, maneuverability and munitions capability etc. (really, anything outside of the cannon) and the JSF is just far superior. In other words, if I was only allowed to have one plane in theater, it wouldn't be the A10.
...what would the JSF need to show capability-wise in order to change your mind?
My objections are not limited to the plane's capabilities. No capabilities would justify especially egregious costs. A sure-to-be-revised-upward $1.7T is probably egregious enough. Similar criticism applies to the military overall.
...if I was only allowed to have one plane in theater...
This seems an unrealistic limitation. Very few aircraft (or ground craft) can protect themselves from all threats. Perhaps the B2 can, because at night it's apparently invisible? Certainly the Warthog is vulnerable to many fighter jets. (Although in several recent wars, fighter jets have not been a threat?) I assume that even the best 4G fighters are vulnerable to the latest AA weapons. However, I think you have helped me answer your first question. At this time it's clear that no command staff would contemplate operating in a particular "theater" with only F35s as combat aircraft. We would have to consider F35s as capable in some sense, if any forward airbase or carrier group would host them without also hosting F15s, F16s, F18s, F22s, etc. That will never happen, but if it does many people will have to eat crow.
...spend less in the military if it goes to better use instead.
Here is our real disagreement. We should spend less, full stop. Nothing justifies a nation with 5% of the world's population spending 36% of the world's military expenditures. The fact that most of us believe there are such justifications indicates deeper problems. We are constantly gaslit by commercial news media, politicians, academics, movies, etc. that the world is very dangerous for us, that we should fear people who live far way, and that we should probably have special operators and deathdrones terrorizing them on a regular basis just to be safe. Most Americans haven't admitted to themselves that not only do we never enter a war for the reasons cited at the time, not only do we kill and impoverish far more innocent people than ever appear on the news, but having entered those wars we never win, and never accomplish any beneficial military objectives. That isn't to even mention the many wars we fight without admitting them, which of course have had worse results. That isn't to even mention the terrible boomerang effects that all our horrible stupid wars have had on our own society.
Everyone else in the world, who aren't constantly subject to the mixture of news and entertainment that never considers whether we should spend less money killing innocent humans, knows this secret that very few Americans can publicly admit. What drives this flood of misinformation? Adults only get one guess... money! USA cable news industry has almost $6B/year in revenue. USA military spending is over 100 times as much. Few are foolish enough to invoke "Hanlon's Razor" here. We all know that greater spending on political campaign "donations" is firmly in the interest of interested industries. Obviously hiring and editorial decisions in media, as well, can be influenced by advertising and access when resources are so far out of balance. On top of that, the three-week ratings bonanza whenever a new TV war starts are enough to make a network profitable for the whole year.
Start by remembering the unanimous push in the war media to get Saddam's WMDs. Then remember that ObL left Afghanistan entirely less than a month after we invaded. Recall that Qaddafi had outlawed both polygamy and slave markets, which have returned to Libya since his violent overthrow. If our military had fewer resources, it would menace the world less, and regular Americans would be safer.
It’s odd that you would find the same type of constraints, such as limiting the evaluation to the single dimension of close air support, to support your view while saying the same constraints are unreasonable in your next response.
I would like you to consider that we likely don’t disagree. I never said that money should be spent on the military or even by the government for that matter. The fact that was how you interpreted that comment before going on that long and apparently pre-chambered rant might be a good reason to give one some pause about your worldview.
I only offered CAS as a sop to the arcane MIC theology seen in this thread. All this prattle about per-unit basis, "Reformers", airframes, base rates, when the Pentagon can't even be audited. I don't particularly care about CAS; we shouldn't be there in the first place.
Either you agree, or you don't. If I can't figure it out, I can't care about it.
You brought up the A10 and the POGO's report to support your point. All my replies have literally been responses to the evidence you've provided for your position, so it's odd that you now think those points are irrelevant.
We probably have the same qualms with the MIC. I just don't think the evidence you use to support your claim is particularly valid, and tends to point towards ignorance on the subject. Combined with the circular logic presented and an inability to state what it would take to change your mind, it makes your position more dogmatic than rational. It’s not just a binary “we agree or don’t”, but the thought process that led it because that’s what will ultimately make me rethink my position. My issue isn't the conclusion, it's the way you came to it.
Wanting one pattern to work everywhere isn't necessarily a bad goal. The OCP pattern, for example, works decently in most environments, and is basically superior to the UCP pattern in virtually all environments (it's marginally weaker in NIR, though). So the real problem seems to be that the criteria for deciding the best pattern was chosen incompetently.
One thing I was surprised to learn about NIR requirements is that it apparently doesn't just mean "dark". I have some coyote brown NIR compliant gear (water carriers etc) and under NIR it has the same shade as grass (which is quite bright, relatively speaking).
Arguably the most famous golf course architect, Dr. Alister MacKenzie (Augusta National, Cypress Point, Pasatiempo, etc), was a civilian physician in WWI and became interested in camouflage design during the war. He made significant contributions to the British military camouflage during his tenure. He later based his golf course architecture, primarily the bunkering, from camouflage design principals he had learned.
There was a ship moored on the Thames in London for a few years painted in a modern interpretation of Dazzle. Sadly it was only there for a few years, I used to love seeing it.
> The HMS President (1918), one of only three surviving Royal Navy warships from the First World War, was ‘dazzled’ by the German sculptor Tobias Rehberger. One of the most respected European artists of his generation, Rehberger is a German sculptor whose work blurs the boundaries between design, sculpture, furniture-making and installation.
> The expression was then always in the form of 'give someone the razzle-dazzle', that is, confuse them. The earliest use that I can find of that sense of 'razzle-dazzle' is the US newspaper The Saint Paul Globe, April 1885:
>> Sir: As you seem to be in earnest in your efforts to give someone the dazzle-dazzle... [I think that's a typo and the original source is indeed razzle-dazzle as being discussed!]
> The expression very quickly came to be used with a more positive intent, that is, where 'razzle-dazzle' was considered to be indicate enjoyment rather than deception. That's found in the Pennsylvania newspaper The Daily Republican, June 1887:
>> A meeting at City Hall resolved to celebrate the Fourth [of July] by a general old-time razzle-dazzle.
Having worked (as a civilian contractor) for the military it's equally plausible that the decision was screwed up for other reasons. High up decision makers that "trust their gut" over what the data tells them or who arbitrarily decide that a certain pattern looks silly to them.
It's absolutely not intuitive that the digital looking blocky camouflage patterns [1] are going to perform better than the blob style camo patterns they replaced.
Commanders have wide discretion and it's part of the decentralized command mindset. They can sometimes make such decisions on no more than "I think this pattern looks cooler than that pattern"
Yep. But it depends on the relationship the commander has with his or her superior officer. Some commanders are burdened with having to justify every single decision they make. Others have basically free reign to lead how they see fit (for better or worse) as long as they stay within the regulations.
Seeing as UCP is owned by the US government, I'm very curious to hear who could have financially benefited from its selection. If anything, HyperStealth here is the one with the financial motivation seeing as their US4CES pattern was not selected.
Much more likely is that multiple entities just wanted something done quickly and didn't follow all the right procedures the way they should have been.
Maybe in here somewhere, "Various statutes supplement the provisions of Chapter 37 to criminalize activities that jeopardize the national defense or national security."
I'm sure the senior military officials pushing UCP through were doing so to intentionally handicap the organization they spent their entire life working for. Rather than just making a mistake based on overestimating their own knowledge. If that's criminalized, all of HN is going behind bars.
I was deployed to CENTCOM in the USAF when these uniforms went into service. Worked closely with Army...If memory serves they were flammable and poorly tested (circa 2006). I can remember the Army units I talked to were having major problems. So if you had the misfortune of getting deployed outside the wire and had to wear those things I could see why you might be a little keyed up 15+ years later.
thats a weird take, very defensive.
But, since youre sure about it I guess everyone should be too.
I'm sure no one is trying to destroy US democracy either or stage insurrections, etc. oh wait...
If I had to guess, I'd say it was intentional and all about money.
That could make it illegal. Even if they didn't intend to lose in combat, it still gave US soldiers a handycap.
So to sum things up, you're suggesting that either US army officials in 2004 chose UCP to weaken the US military in preparation for a fascist coup in 2020 OR they chose a US gov owned pattern over commercial patterns to make money (somehow)? And you're calling my response defensive and weird lmao
They said their guess is "money".
This looks like your trying to put words in someone elses mouth.
The examples of corruption in government seems to be just that, examples.
Im not sure why you try to act like they all need to be tied together somehow?
Alright so to avoid putting words in anyone's mouth, please outline how corruption could have caused the US to fast track a pattern it developed itself rather than one of the superior commercial patterns that they would have had to pay royalties on.
The US didn't fast track anything, individuals did.
As far as motive goes, there could be many reasons, and what might be able to motivate you may not have the effect on someone else.
Since you want something to help you understand motivation and how it relates to corruption, here is a link with some explanations.
Snipers are supposed to augment their camo with local materials, even in the woods. Non-sniper camo is a bit different, you wouldn't want to run across the street in that.
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.
Now I want to show up at our Zoom meetings in full camo. Doctors and soldiers get such cool uniforms, but us programmers are just business casual.
Plus then you could convince a few of your coworkers to show up in camo with you and make your manager nervous you’re about to do a hostile takeover of the company.
I go for the classic 'Big Blue' look and wear a suit and tie. Helps me to mentally separate work and relaxation time, with the added benefit of getting better treatment from management.
> Doctors and soldiers get such cool uniforms, but us programmers are just business casual.
Programmers' uniforms are excessively-expensive hiking clothes, or selvedge jeans with flannel and full-grain leather boots, ideally in a work- or jump-boot style.
"his colleagues, a gender-parity posse of young, smart-looking people, along with one graybeard (literally -- he had a Unix beard of great rattiness and gravitas) who had no fewer than seven devices on his belt, including a line tester and a GPS." -- Cory Doctorow
An interesting evolution in the camouflage meta is the proliferation of inexpensive thermal cameras. Chinese companies like Infiray are producing reasonably-priced thermal monoculars that defeat all colour-based camo. Low-spec monos and COTI-style devices start around $2k and high-spec (around 720p 50Hz) for around $5k, same price as a nice omni VIII NVG mono.
Question (from somebody who only skimmed the article): how much variance exists of that fabric? Is that pattern repeated after x meters if fabric?
If so: wouldn't knowing what to look for greatly increase the ability to automatically extract the pattern from image data?
(Like how it is possible to extract signals from below the noise floor in LoRa communication?)
Camouflage for high value assets is rapidly becoming a point of focus.
The Armenia-Azerbaijan war of 2020 and the Russia-Ukraine war of 2022 have both displayed the growing need to prioritise sensor camouflage.
The contemporary peer on peer battlefield runs 24/7, but humans require periodic quality rest.
The two most recent peer on peer conflicts display how stopping and harbouring up makes you an easier fixed target.
The conundrum of the modern battlefield is that if you stop, you die. But if you don’t stop, you face rapid cognitive decline and die.
Sensor camouflage could be an insurance policy that meets or exceeds minimum rest and recovery needs of soldiers as well as improving expensive asset survivability in a world looking increasingly like “SCUD the Disposable Assassin” where loitering munitions are getting cheap enough to target individual combatants.
Makes me think of active camflague like a cloaking device, probably not practical for military, but give 360 camera, processing and miniaturization technology advancement how hard would it be to make a see through car for instance
There's a system named ADAPTIV [1] which is essentially a bunch of tiles that can alter their temperature to make a tank look like a civilian car on the infrared band.
Random but does anyone know where to buy a official Crye precision multicam texture for game dev? Their website gives the impression they just sell fabrics to the US market
That'd probably be rather hard since the texture is exactly where the profit is. For a game you don't need an exact 100% match, just something that looks right. I'd go looking for stock photos of people in the cammo, and then collaging a bunch of it together using GIMPs resynthesizer plugin. That should get it to look right without it being the exact pattern.
Anyone reading should check out the links at the bottom: the nightvision images in particular really highlight the issue with having poor NIR performance.
I wore this pattern during my time in the service. It sucked and did not blend into anything but wet gravel. It sucked so much that when it came time to deploy overseas, troops were issued Multicam uniforms to better blend with the elements.
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?
Night vision is not digital, usually (digital NV exists, but it's not as good at amplifying as gen3 analog NV). Thermal has digital screens, but it's far less widespread than NV.
I don't know the specifics when it comes to the physics of it, but analog NV amplification simply has more sensitivity than digital image sensors. Of course, you can still analog-amplify an image onto a camera sensor for further digital processing, but I don't think that's common.
The particular case that you describe - automatically adjusting to ambient light - is handled adequately by analog circuits; this is called "auto-gating", and is pretty much standard nowadays.
Yes and no. Special ops forces could definitely make use of it. The hard part is ensuring the deployment equipment is reliable 99.99% of the time, since bugs on the battlefield get people killed.
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.
For deer (with guns), yes. For things like turkeys, ducks, geese, deer with bows, etc they do not. In hunter safety they really stressed to be careful hunting turkeys.
You seem to be saying that fowl have good color vision, so hunters of those need to avoid the orange stuff, and other hunters can't rely on seeing it to avoid shooting one another.
Deer have more cones and less rods than humans. They have no red-sensitive rods at all. They also have no ultraviolet filtration, so they see blue much more acutely and pick up on UV-wavelength brighteners quite easily.
It's a pretty excellent application if flexibility can be solved.
The issues with color in e-ink boil down to having to float more kinds of ink dot, making it slooooow. But instantly changing to match surroundings isn't ideal, because it's change, and change is what we notice.
Granted that if it could change instantly then that process could just be run slowly, but it seems like a lesser disadvantage compared to any user interface.
The British red coats were a kind of dazzle camouflage, making it hard to see individuals within the group. People weren't stupid back then - they just had different design goals to what we have now.
In addition, C2 was not what it is today, so an important design goal for military uniforms was to distinguish friend from foe on the battlefield.
In the same vein, modern militaries often attach IR strobes to personnel and vehicles to identify them at night. This will likely appear silly in a few years when night optics are pervasive (if that hasn't happened already).
"Lieutenant! We're sticking out like sore thumbs here! Why did we go with bright-fucking-red as our uniform colour? The enemy can clearly see us coming!"
"Corporal, your job is to bang on that drum as we march, not complain about military fashion."
As I just said, the design consideration wasn't to not stick out.
'Shock action' is a modern military term, but that's partly what they were trying to achieve in those days through visual impact. 'Shatter the enemy's cohesion and will to fight' is something they were trying to achieve through visual impact.
As another example today, think about why the UN paint their vehicles white. It's because their visibility and presence on the battlefield provides a tactical effect.
I didn't think that UN peacekeepers appeared on battlefields - don't they normally stay in their bases, or patrol peaceful areas? There usually has to be some peace before the peacekeepers rock up.
What advantage would it provide to make it harder to distinguish individual soldiers? Wouldn't their enemies just volley fire into the mass of red coats, instead of picking and choosing?
> What advantage would it provide to make it harder to distinguish individual soldiers?
Distinguishing individual soldiers is an important step in counting the size of a line. Accepting "red coats blend together" as truth, that would make it more difficult for an opposing general to determine which parts of a battle line were stronger or weaker, thus making it more difficult to preposition forces to exploit weak sections.
Once the battle was joined the camouflage effect would not have mattered as much, but before the deployment of radio it was also very, very difficult to change battle plans "on the fly."
When determining weaker sections visually, wouldn't you go by "mass" of soldiers? I don't think anybody would count individual soldiers.
In any case, given the technology of the time, if you were beyond engagement range, I don't think you would have been able to pick out individual soldiers by sight regardless of which uniforms they were wearing...
My theory is that vibrant color uniforms were chosen simply to make identification of different formations easier.
It helped to identify friend-vs-foe yes, but not formation, as formations were distinguished by the lining of their uniform, which wasn't very visible!
Also red was just an easy colour to get hold of and to dye with, and it hid blood.
The red mass of undistinguished soldiers created an imposing sight on the battlefield. It's not about wanting to hit individuals (why would you?) it's about the shock factor.
This is only infantry as well - where shock action was even more important - cavalry - and distinction didn't apply - you had less uniform more elaborate uniforms.
Wikipedia (I know, I know) seems to imply it was simply that the die was common, that it was a traditional symbol of an English soldier, and for identification of friend vs foe:
> However, in the days of the musket (a weapon of limited range and accuracy) and black powder, battle field visibility was quickly obscured by clouds of smoke. Bright colours provided a means of distinguishing friend from foe without significantly adding risk. Furthermore, the vegetable dyes used until the 19th century would fade over time to a pink or ruddy-brown, so on a long campaign in a hot climate the colour was less conspicuous than the modern scarlet shade would be. As formal battles of the time commonly involved deployment in columns and lines, the individual soldier was not likely to be a target by himself.
and
> In his book British Military Uniforms (Hamylyn Publishing Group 1968), the military historian W. Y. Carman traces in considerable detail the slow evolution of red as the English soldier's colour, from the Tudors to the Stuarts. The reasons that emerge are a mixture of financial (cheaper red, russet or crimson dyes), cultural (a growing popular sense that red was the sign of an English soldier),[64] and simple chance (an order of 1594 is that coats "be of such colours as you can best provide").
There is no mention of "dazzle" camouflage or of confounding numbers at all.
It's funny because zebra stripes don't make them harder to be seen by lions. There was an article about this on HN, showing the low-res vision of lions cannot tell stripes or no stripes at a distance.
Apparently zebra stripes have more to do with reducing fly bites, among other things.
Camouflage was absolutely not a goal of 18th century uniforms. When you are wheeling around infantry units like big blocks camouflage is more or less tactically irrelevant.
Furthermore, if they were trying to blend in with each other like one big homogeneous mass of infantry they wouldn't have given everyone hats in a contrasting color.
The goal of their uniforms wasn't to hide individuals within the environment, but to make it hard to discern individuals within the imposing mass of soldiers.
The goal of their uniforms (and other colorful uniforms of that era) was to make units visible to the commanders on their side, so that they could grasp the arrangement of the battlefield easily, and know where to e.g. send a messenger to relay orders.
That doesn't explain why early-modern generals adopted costumes with extremely distinctive hats. Napoleon's hat, for example, was meant to allow troops to discern him instantly.
Flamboyantly colored uniforms of the time also helped prevent friendly fire. Each volley of musket fire filled the air with a white smoke cloud. [1][2]
I wonder if the goal of bright, flashy uniforms was not the psychological effect that it has both on enemy and friends.
There's a long history of armies going into battle bedecked in attire calculated to test the enemy's resolve and bolster their own. Skyclad Celtic warriors and extravagantly feathered Eagle Warriors. Spartans with red chitons and Samurai with monstrous faceplates. My favourite example is the Parthian geneal Surena's flamboyant manoeuver at the Battle of Carrhae (in 53 BC):
The Parthians went to great lengths to intimidate the Romans. Firstly, they beat a great number of hollow drums and the Roman troops were unsettled by the loud and cacophonous noise. Surena then ordered his cataphracts to cover their armour in cloths and advance. When they were within sight of the Romans, they simultaneously dropped the cloths and revealed their shining armour. The sight was designed to intimidate the Romans.[24]
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 found wanting because they don't work under IR (e.g. the soldier shines against the background). That sounds like they're using the wrong dyes; surely a decent design methodology would lead to such problems being remedied by incremental improvement?