
The story behind China's 'Minecraft' military camouflage - yannis
http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20160324-the-story-behind-chinas-minecraft-military-camo
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nether
The US Army is ditching the digital pattern for a more traditional, splotchy
pattern, Scorpion W2: [http://tacticalgear.com/ocp-
acus](http://tacticalgear.com/ocp-acus)

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33W
That's a fantastic page. I was in from '03-'08, and was issued woodland BDUs,
desert DCUs, and finally the UCP ACUs. Multicam and the new OCP pattern have
come since. I had 2 versions of the PT uniform (which have changed once or
twice since), and narrowly avoided having to purchase the new dress uniform.

Overall, the Army needs to find a uniform that it likes and stick with it.
Particularly for something that does not affect combat effectiveness (PT,
Dress), a single style should be good for decades.

I think that the Army should define a garrison uniform that they can stick
with, something along the lines of the BDU with the additional pockets of the
ACU. Then define a combat uniform for different terrain or combat theaters as
needed.

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zeveb
> Particularly for something that does not affect combat effectiveness (PT,
> Dress), a single style should be good for decades.

Completely agree.

> I think that the Army should define a garrison uniform that they can stick
> with, something along the lines of the BDU with the additional pockets of
> the ACU.

The garrison uniform should be what the Navy terms a 'service uniform':
polished leather shoes, trousers, a long- or short-sleeved blouse depending on
the weather, and a cover, with optional coat and tie. It doesn't ever need to
change, except maybe slightly in cut to keep up with civilian styles.

Camouflage should only be worn when actually fighting, or training to fight.
Anyone sitting at a desk outside of a war zone should be wearing a service
uniform, not camo.

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monocasa
> Anyone sitting at a desk outside of a war zone should be wearing a service
> uniform, not camo.

But how will you feel cool if you're not wearing your BDUs?

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GuiA
Ship camouflage, particularly "dazzle camouflage", is another example of a
counterintuitive pattern at first making sense; see the first picture here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage)

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cptskippy
Dazzle wasn't intended to hide the ship but rather make it difficult to
ascertain it's class, speed and heading.

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hackbinary
I'm sorry, but you're statement is contradictory:

    
    
       a.) Dazzle wasn't intended to hide the ship
       b.) make it difficult to ascertain it's [sic] class, speed and heading
    
       Hide = hard to find
       Difficult = hard
       Ascertain = to know, to find out, to determine
    

The point of camouflage is to hide 'information', and while that can be to
make something blend in with its location/surroundings, it can also certainly
be to make it appear to be something else, or doing something different from
what it is actually doing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflage)

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function_seven
You can't be serious with this.

"Hide the ship" means:

    
    
        All I see is open ocean, sir!
    

"Difficult to ascertain its class, speed, and heading" means:

    
    
        I don't know what kind of ship that is, sir! Nor do I know
        what direction it's traveling in! Hell, it's hard to see how
        fast it's going as well, sir! But I do know this, sir, there's a
        ship there.
    

But I think you're smart enough to figure that out.

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hackbinary
No, these are all degrees of the same thing, concealment. That is the point of
camouflage. There are two main strands to camouflage: 1\. prevention of
detection (crypsis), 2\. look like something else (mimicry).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_camouflage)
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/camouflage](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/camouflage)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage)

~~~
function_seven
Oye. Ok, so the parent comment was this:

> Dazzle wasn't intended to hide the ship but rather make it difficult to
> ascertain it's class, speed and heading.

Here I am rephrasing it to fit your terms:

> Dazzle wasn't intended to [prevent detection of] the ship but rather make it
> [look like something else].

But for some reason you chose instead to read that as a contradictory
statement?

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99_00
Digital camouflage has been used for a long time, with it's roots going back
before WW2. Countries like the US and Canada who have advanced the technology.
The main advantage seems to be it has more than one optimal viewing distance.

From wikipedia:

Traditional single scale patterns work well in their optimal range from the
observer, however an observer too close or too far away will not see the
pattern optimally. Nature itself is very often fractal, where plants and rock
formations exhibit similar patterns across several magnitudes of scale. The
idea behind multi scale patterns is both to mimic the cross-scale self-
similarity of nature, and also to offer camouflage at close-range in addition
to the traditional combat range camouflage.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camouflage)

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damian2000
Shouldn't minecraft be replaced with 'pixelated' ... its really got nothing to
do with minecraft has it?

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jonnathanson
The article's actual headline (though not the link title) uses 'Minecraft' in
quotation marks. It's saying that the pixelated pattern resembles a series of
Minecraft blocks -- not that there is any literal connection to Minecraft.

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optimuspaul
it's because the textures on the minecraft blocks look like the camo. has
nothing to do with the blocks.

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jonnathanson
We're basically splitting hairs at this point. The camo pattern looks like the
textures on the Minecraft blocks, or vice versa. It's not that the pattern
literally looks like it's made of Minecraft blocks, and I'm sorry if I gave
that impression.

This is one of the silliest arguments I've ever been involved in on the
internet, and that's saying something. :) Can we just say "They used the word
'Minecraft' in the title because the camo kinda sorta looks like Minecraft
textures" and move on with our lives?

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mahranch
How is this a story behind "China's" camouflage? It's clearly a small blurb
about the history of digital camo (or "texture match" camo") in general. The
U.S has been using this for a long time, as well as dozens of other countries.
Yet, the article doesn't do much to talk about China's application other than
noting they too, use it (sometimes).

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cvarjas
Agreed, mainly just some history of digital camo. Camopedia [1] has similar
information, and it looks like China has been using these patterns since 2007.

[1]
[http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Digital_patterns](http://camopedia.org/index.php?title=Digital_patterns)

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mudetroit
I was more perplexed about the camouflaged vehicles being bright blue...

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huahaiy
Those are amphibious fighting vehicles, used for landing from the sea. The
sea, as we know, are blue colored.

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DanBC
These are amphibious?

[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/1600_640/images/live/p0/3...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/wwfeatures/1600_640/images/live/p0/3n/y4/p03ny4g9.jpg)

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huahaiy
These are not. But they belong to the same unit of those amphibious light
tanks, so used the same camouflage. During a landing operation, these long
range rockets are likely deployed on the decks of flotilla as artillery
support for the beachhead assault.

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vonmoltke
Those are transporter erector launchers for the YJ-62 anti-ship cruise
missile. They are deployed as shore-based defensive batteries. The coloring is
likely intended to make them blend in with the sky (when viewed from the ocean
surface) and the surf zone (when viewed from above).

As for deploying rocket artillery on ships, that wouldn't be a good idea.
Firing platforms need to be better secured in order to be used from a ship.
Regardless, China doesn't have many amphibious assault ships with significant
clear deck space.

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jonathankoren
Gizmodo had a pretty good write up on the history digicam. It's interesting
that the US Army abandoned it after they tried a one-camp-to-rule-them-all.
Instead of helping soldiers hide in Afghanistan, it helped them be visible.

[http://gizmodo.com/the-history-of-invisibility-and-the-
futur...](http://gizmodo.com/the-history-of-invisibility-and-the-future-of-
camouflag-1487381235)

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sevenless
If "digital" camouflage with patterns of squares works so well, why don't
animals use it?

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oh_sigh
If internal combustion engines work so well, why don't animals use it?

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sevenless
Engines (or wheels) need independent moving parts, high temperatures, which is
hardly compatible with what's allowed by anatomy and biochemistry. But there's
nothing obviously stopping animals from evolving any particular pattern of
skin markings.

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mikeash
Skin markings are pretty complicated for an animal. Each cell somehow needs to
"know" what color it should be, potentially different from its neighbors,
without carrying any information unique to that cell.

Imagine billions of LEDs, and you want to make them display a picture, but you
separately program them, you can't address them individually, and you can't
even really have them talk to each other. You can sort of flood them with
broadcasts of different strengths to influence how they turn on. The sorts of
patterns you could form would be fairly limited.

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electrograv
I have to wonder why they all have the same digital pattern. This seems like a
terrible idea. It would be almost trivial to make a computer vision algorithm
to pick these out against any background, as long as you know what digital
pattern you're looking for.

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josefresco
An entire article about digital camouflage and they offer one measly 245 px
wide photo 3/4 down the article. The linked article about the Chinese military
parade only featured 1 _decent_ image. _sigh_

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DanBC
There are 3 images in the article, with a banner header image too.

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rwhitman
Satellite / drone camouflage.

I'm certainly not a military expert, but it seems fairly obvious that China's
military would benefit from being able to hide from high altitude
surveillance. They're not doing a whole lot with these vehicles in combat at
the moment, but masking their position and numbers seems like a pretty
important objective for someone trying to build up an arsenal without
escalating tension.

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narrator
I bet these tanks looks low-res from satellites.

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hackbinary
I'm not sure why blocky camo seems so revolutionary. It was proven highly
effective in WWI by both the American and British.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage)

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bradford
One, it's not clear that you can compare dazzle camouflage to digital
camouflage. The design, as well as the visual attributes, are very different.

Two, the effectiveness of Dazzle was debatable:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage#Effectivenes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage#Effectiveness)

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diskcat
Next somebody is going to be telling me their camera has 20 mega minecrafts.

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ggggtez
The use of Minecraft in the title is pretty obnoxious.

