
Army Camouflage That Failed to Hide Its Soldiers - howard941
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/army-camouflage-that-cost-more.html
======
larrik
> it was decided that the design should work in all terrains to be more cost-
> effective.

I'm not sure they know what "camouflage" means, because that sounds like it
should be impossible.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
The cynical answer is they didn't care because it was a good contract to throw
to friendly companies.

The one that gets me is how the Navy insisted on getting a digital pattern
too. What's the point of wearing cammo on a freaking giant ship?!

~~~
dragonwriter
> What's the point of wearing cammo on a freaking giant ship?!

Navy personnel don't serve exclusively on ships, and people on the decks of
ships can be individual targets when the ship is within smallarms range of
land or another vessel.

~~~
DennisP
I know someone who served on aircraft carriers over the past few years, and
was in charge of close-in ship defense on one tour. He said the camo was no
tactical help at all, but was a real safety issue when people fell overboard,
which occasionally did happen.

~~~
craftinator
I was on a carrier for a year, and we had a large number of false alarm Man-
Over board events. The pilots were incredibly frustrated at the Navy's camo,
because they would have to fly around looking for a blue sailor in a blue
ocean until we finally finished counting everyone on ship. The reason the Navy
has those is because they look cool and "carry the honor and tradition of the
US Navy", the reason the military does most things. All in all, it gets kids
fresh out of high school to sign up.

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encypruon
This article got me thinking. Would it make sense to train a GAN to generate
camouflage? With the generator generating textures for the objects you want to
hide and the discriminator trying to spot them in scenes rendered with a
differentiable renderer like "neural renderer" [1]? The 2D-to-3D style
transfer examples almost look like camouflage already.

[1] [http://hiroharu-
kato.com/projects_en/neural_renderer.html](http://hiroharu-
kato.com/projects_en/neural_renderer.html)

~~~
all2
How good would this be for a 'general' solution to the problem?

Specifically, a good uniform must function across a wide variety of
environments; see the USMC uniforms for a good example.

If we had 'active' camouflage that was updated on the fly, this might make
some sense?

~~~
arethuza
You do get what are effectively very large inkjet printers that can print
patterns on materials - might be easier to "print" custom camouflage for a
particular environment?

~~~
all2
Repaint / reprint when deployment orders are received? How durable is the
print, though? The current paint used on most vehicles is incredible stuff.
You can't even mar it with a super-high pressure water cannon.

As for uniforms; I'm not sure any military regular with clout would be willing
to do something as practical as custom uniforms based on deployment
environment. Too much change, too much innovation.

~~~
arethuza
Well, I wasn't being _entirely_ serious - but did visit a place where they
were printing cloth for use in furniture so it looked pretty heavyweight
material.

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mi100hael
UCP camo blends in well in some areas...
[https://i.redd.it/68lxwxjrbe001.jpg](https://i.redd.it/68lxwxjrbe001.jpg)

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mikece
While there's the easy joke about "army intelligence" it's also true that
camouflage is hard to get right. Not only do you need to blend in/be non-
obvious to the naked eye but also infrared, thermal, and other aspects. This
is why JSOC has "Camouflage Scientists" for outfitting their Tier 1 units,
sometimes on a mission-by-mission basis.

URL:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/27/photo_camo/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/27/photo_camo/)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>While there's the easy joke about "army intelligence"

They did the best they could given that the only colors available were the
crayons that nobody had eaten.

The Marines are picky eaters, that's why they got better camo.

~~~
all2
The US Army got awful uniforms because someone (or multiple someones) were
making money from the deal. Never-mind the only thing an ACU pattern blends in
with is grandma's couch [0].

[0] [https://www.funker530.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ACU-
cou...](https://www.funker530.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ACU-couch-
web.jpg)

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ZanyProgrammer
The ACU itself was an improvement over BDUs, despite the UCP being not good
for anything other than hiding in gravel roads. For example, getting rid of
the absurdity of boot shining and pressing the same uniform you’re supposed to
wear in the field (and EVERYONE starched their BDUs to cardboard consistency
for garrison use).

~~~
Wohlf
Starching was truly idiotic, it turns your uniform in to kindling, makes it
less breathable, and prevents it from absorbing bug repellents. Completely
defeated the purpose of having a utility uniform, looking good is what the
service uniform was for. We Marines got the same benefits with better
camouflage by adopting the MCCUU. Making all our gear coyote was smart too, it
takes on the color of the soil around you once you spend some time on the
ground. Although that is true for all gear, it works particularly well with
coyote.

~~~
gumby
I have always found starching clothes hilarious: cloth was soaked in starch to
make it easier to cut and sew; you want to wash it out before use to make it
comfortable.

The conceit of _adding_ starch back in later to make something look new is
already funny; to do it routinely is absurd.

Of course anyone who has been in the military of any country knows "absurd" is
a pretty frequent factor.

~~~
logfromblammo
The effect is more pronounced for someone who has never been in the military,
but has had occasion to observe military personnel going about their daily
tasks, for the purpose of partially automating their jobs with custom-built
software.

I'm not certain that "absurd" is a strong enough word for it.

I was frequently reminded of Tevye the milkman singing "TRADITION!" at the top
of his lungs. The only thing worse than participating in absurd and obsolete
traditions as an insider is to be forced as an outsider to completely ruin an
otherwise rational workflow in order to accommodate them.

If you have ever taken calipers to a software-generated printout, in order to
compare it to a paper form that was last revised in 1980, and printed in bulk
ever since, you deserve to wear starched underwear.

~~~
gumby
The purpose of tradition and drill is to encourage people to take action
without thinking (this is why the officer/enlisted distinction still exists).
In addition, idle hands are the devil's tool, and when you have a bunch of
young men doing nothing you need to keep them busy.

True absurdity in the military is an orthogonal axis and runs from, indeed,
vestigial rules such as you imply, all the way up to ordering enormous weapons
systems the military doesn't even want simply for political reasons.

~~~
jandrese
Kind of a shame we can't think of better busywork for the troops. Sending them
out to patch up roads and bridges or cleaning up streams or something. It's
such a shame to spend so much time and effort on obsolete and silly uniform
regulations.

~~~
logfromblammo
I'd probably end up turning the Army into a grindy JRPG-style augmented-
reality game, and the enlisted would eventually end up referring to civilians
as the NPCs.

But we'd also have viable gunblades and dozens of rare uniform crafting
recipes, and our military would be well prepared to repel zombie pandemics,
space-alien invasions, and goblin sieges, as well as to defeat S-class
daikaiju.

...So there is something to be said for letting experienced professional
soldiers run the military. They might know what they're doing behind the
facade of repetitive busywork, like Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san karate. Or
they might not. It's hard to tell from where I sit. A lot of the budget is not
freely auditable by the public, and I have certainly seen firsthand a very
small portion of it totally wasted on absolute nonsense.

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pnw_hazor
The article doesn't mention that USMC included their logo in their new and
effective camo so other services couldn't/wouldn't use it.

Otherwise, the Army could have used the same patterns developed by the Marine
Corp.

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chriselles
UCP/ACU is the definition of a horrible compromise.

The only environment where it possesses some applicability is complex urban
terrain.

We face exactly the same problem in NZ with our MCU pattern.

Jack of all trade, master of none.

Seeing US ACP/ACU and NZ MCU in forestry/jungle, especially in low light, is
like seeing a person wearing a white sheet over their head. Ineffective.

Multicam is the most flexible cam pattern I’ve seen as a one size fits all.

US Marine Corps’ and Canadian Army’s two types(each) of digital cam for desert
and temperate climates are pretty effective.

Blue navy camouflage I’ve seen worn by US and Australian Navy personnel make
no sense.

You don’t want to be camouflaged if you’re ships crew, you want to be
seen/found. Should be hi-viz.

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umvi
Most military personnel are working in offices anyway, and this new uniform
probably saved $5B worth of repetitive uniform maintenance in man-hours
(ironing, shining, etc).

I would hope spec-ops in the field aren't just wearing standard issue ACUs but
rather are highly adapted to the specific terrain they are working in.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I suspect that for on base there was a considerable about of ironing and
shining or does the USA not go in for bulling boots.

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jsiepkes
So me andere my friends went airsofting ons time, just for fun. Everyone got
issued woodland camouflage and I got the "cool" US camouflage (ie. The
camouflage of the article). Wooohooo! ....or so I thought.

The refs came to me mid game and told me to get a normal woodland camouflage
because everyone could see me from a mile away...

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stvswn
I wore this everyday for 5 years, including in Iraq, and I always felt that it
was horrible at actually camoflauging anything. One main reason was that it
would get brighter and brighter over time, as the colors tended to fade -- a
well worn was incredbily light-looking that Soldiers would pop out at you
against a darker background. We were told eventually that you can't use
regular detergent on it because it has brighteners, that you should use
Woolite. It was also supposed to be a benefit to have velcro for nametapes,
rank, and unit insignia so that soldiers didn't need to pay to get things sewn
on, but it made for very noisy and inconvenient examples of people sticking to
each other in close quarters.

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presidentender
UCP looked great as the background of recruiting ads. That was its greatest
utility until people realized how stupid it was in practice.

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pmarreck
Why is using United States citizens as live test subjects with their lives at
stake, "cost-effective"?

I often complain about a lack of test coverage in code, but I cannot fathom
how testing was COMPLETELY skipped on a $5 BILLION dollar project that
directly impacts lives.

Disclaimer: 4 year USAF veteran

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MisterTea
I called it internet camo and told my friends who were in the military at the
time that the USA was preparing to invade cyberspace.

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huffmsa
> _Military dumps billions into magic multirole capability._ > _It falls and
> billions need to be dumped into it 's single function replacements_

You can almost replace UCP with F-35 and have an accurate article.

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mimixco
An episode of Shark Tank recently featured a camo design made out of real
photographs of natural backgrounds. Does the military not know about this
option?

~~~
dingaling
Only a small percentage of camouflaged deployments are about blending in with
the background; observation, snipers and static roles like that.

Infantry and vehicles move too much to make background-matching practical, so
the primary purpose of their camouflage is to break up identifiable outlines.

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koala_man
The pop-up video ads after every single paragraph effectively camouflaged the
contents for me...

~~~
everdev
Try an ad blocker:

[https://github.com/ghostery/ghostery-
extension](https://github.com/ghostery/ghostery-extension)

~~~
koala_man
What are my options on Android? Switching browsers and side loaded apks?

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bootlooped
I use ad-away. It requires root, but it can block ads in any browser or app.

I think Firefox Focus has ad blocking built-in.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Regular Firefox Mobile can have uBlock Origin added.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
I bet after fiascos such as this, if we had some of the contractors and their
Pentagon collaborators executed for treason for endangering our soldiers, the
situation with procurement would rapidly improve.

~~~
panzagl
If by 'rapidly improve' you mean 'become even more mired in regulation, over-
analysis and responsibility-shedding behavior' then sure, I guess.

