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U.S. Army Camouflage Improvement Explained (2013)
- jeffrallen 4y agoThe parts about "they changed it but didn't test it and then we're surprised when it didn't work right" made me so mad I couldn't finish reading it. Arrrrgh.
- JohnTHaller 4y ago[2013]
- causi 4y agoIt appears that someone circumnavigated the scientific process and forced UCP in. That would be whoever benefitted financially from the decision to fuck our soldiers over.
- sam_lowry_ 4y agoAre these people in prison yet?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhat law was broken?
- _tomcat_ 4y agoidk, but it seems to undermine national security. Maybe in here somewhere, "Various statutes supplement the provisions of Chapter 37 to criminalize activities that jeopardize the national defense or national security." IANAL ;)
- some_random 4y agoI'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.
- _tomcat_ 4y agothats 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.
- some_random 4y agoSo 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
- PastaArt 4y agoThey 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? Seem pretty defensive & weird.
- some_random 4y agoAlright 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.
- _tomcat_ 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bovermyer 4y agoYou're assuming malicious intent, multiple co-conspirators, and illegal action. None of that information is available to you.
- michaelbuckbee 4y agoHaving 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. 1 - https://www.businessinsider.com/why-militaries-have-strange-pixelated-camo-2016-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/why-militaries-have-strange-...
- olalonde 4y agoHanlon's razor strikes again.
- bumby 4y agoCommanders 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"
- bityard 4y agoYep. 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.
- ncmncm 4y agoBerets.
- some_random 4y agoSeeing 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.
- bovermyer 4y agoMuch 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. Don't presume malice when incompetence will do.
- furyg3 4y agoI mean, there is an obvious (gigantic) budgetary and logistical advantage of having one form of camouflage for all situations over more than one. If it works, of course, which it doesn't.
- some_random 4y agoThis is a fascinating read that I recommend to anyone interested in modern camouflage.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spicymaki 4y agoToday's camo is so much better than the red coats the British were wearing in the 18th century. chuckle
- chrisseaton 4y agoThe 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.
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoCamouflage 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.
- chrisseaton 4y agoI said dazzle camouflage, and it was. 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.
- denton-scratch 4y agoThat 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.
- chrisseaton 4y agoA leader would want to stand out - this was before long range marksmen would be able to hit them from a distance.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoNow 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.
- cobertos 4y agoI really like the mandatory programming socks my company prescribes. Waaaay better than business casual
- biofox 4y agoI 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.
- corrral 4y ago> 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.
- ahazred8ta 4y ago"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
- jcranmer 4y agoIf 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.
- alexb_ 4y agoI'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.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoIt would be funny to have chairs and desks with the same pattern so you would actually blend in…
- munificent 4y agoRelevant famous old photo: https://soldiersystems.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/img_6425.jpg https://soldiersystems.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/img_64...
- jessaustin 4y agoWho left his boots on the couch?!
- bloqs 4y agoRandom 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
- chrisseaton 4y agoSounds expensive.
- Doxin 4y agoThat'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.
- JoelMcCracken 4y agoI feel like eventually they'll be back to highland plaids as being the optimal pattern.
- woevdbz 4y agoFeels like a great application for adversarial generative networks
- denton-scratch 4y agoI 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?
- jcranmer 4y agoThe 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yencabulator 4y agoThe 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.
- danielvf 4y agoIt'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. As jcranmer says, there's more details on the reasons it works somewhere down in this page, https://www.hyperstealth.com/US4CES-ALPHA/index.html https://www.hyperstealth.com/US4CES-ALPHA/index.html
- XorNot 4y agoAnyone reading should check out the links at the bottom: the nightvision images in particular really highlight the issue with having poor NIR performance.
- chasebank 4y agoTangentially related - 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. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_MacKenzie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alister_MacKenzie
- yboris 4y agoWWI & WWII related: the Dazzle Camouflage for ships! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
- chasebank 4y agoThanks! That was interesting! Now I know where the phrase razzle dazzle came from!
- jrochkind1 4y agothe term seems to pre-date the camo. > 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. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/razzle-dazzle.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/razzle-dazzle.html
- nmeofthestate 4y agoDazzle is a word - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dazzle https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dazzle
- tiffanyh 4y agoI'm somewhat surprised the article didn't discuss "contrast" as it relates to patterns and background.
- jabl 4y agoSlightly related, in case anyone wonders why most military aircraft are gray and not the camouflage patterns that were previously common on top surfaces, hushkit has a writeup: https://hushkit.net/2020/03/09/grey-aircraft-who-is-to-blame/ https://hushkit.net/2020/03/09/grey-aircraft-who-is-to-blame... tl;dr: gray is a good camouflage color against clouds or haze, which is a fairly common background for aircraft operating at mid to high altitudes. (The logic is fairly similar to what results in Navy ships being painted haze gray and not azure blue or whatever color the ocean happens to be today)
- wyager 4y agoAn 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.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoSpotting dudes in camo seems like a prime opportunity for neural net ar
- qbasic_forever 4y agoThere'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 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.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoYes 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.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoI'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?
- int_19h 4y agoNight 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.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoWhy is that? I would assume digital night vision would be vastly superior catching a lot of edge cases like bright likes becoming blinding?
- Rastonbury 4y agoMakes 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
- cxcorp 4y agoThere'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. [1]: https://www.baesystems.com/en/feature/adativ-cloak-of-invisibility https://www.baesystems.com/en/feature/adativ-cloak-of-invisi...
- 323 4y agoSomewhat related, urban sniper camouflage: https://i.imgur.com/hhQDS9c.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/hhQDS9c.jpeg
- yencabulator 4y agoSnipers 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.
- trhway 4y agoIt is 21st century. Flex OLEDs displaying pattern depending on your background is your camo. Your tank is covered with 80inch displays too.
- dqpb 4y agocolor e-ink displays would be kind of fun
- samatman 4y agoIt'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.
- mothsonasloth 4y agoInteresting take on design decisions for modern camouflage. In my opinion Tigerstripe camouflage is one of the best patterns to be invented both for aesthetics and function. Followed by British DPM in second place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigerstripe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigerstripe
- battery_glasses 4y agoIf you want this website to remotely readable you can run this in your browser console when the page is up: document.querySelectorAll('p').forEach(elm => elm.style.width = "93vw")
- russellbeattie 4y agoI 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- malkia 4y agoWhy 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.
- happyopossum 4y agoMost 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.
- shard 4y agoWhat if the deer is also color-blind? What colors do deer see anyway?
- bendur_ 4y agoDeer have a hard time with orange and red, which makes the blaze orange work well for deer hunting. Deer don't notice, and people really notice.
- jessaustin 4y agoUngulates see yellow and blue, but not red. https://www.rmef.org/elk-network/what-you-see-isnt-what-that-elk-sees-eye-of-the-beholder/ https://www.rmef.org/elk-network/what-you-see-isnt-what-that...
- samatman 4y agoDeer 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.
- bendur_ 4y ago
- mNovak 4y agoI'm actually stunned just how effective that MARPAT pattern is compared to the NATO blob camo, in the second image.
- fho 4y agoQuestion (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?)
- ncmncm 4y agoMy thought too: a cheap, simple NN attached to the raw image in scopes and sights, programmed to highlight anything it recognizes. Now I imagine uniform fabric with adversarial patterns added, for those.
- fho 4y agoDoesn't even have to be any fancy ML stuff. Just convolute the input images with the camo pattern.
- fho 4y agoOr ... just detect this specific patch that seems to on every variation of the pattern: https://www.hyperstealth.com/camo-improvement/cadpat-us-variations.jpg https://www.hyperstealth.com/camo-improvement/cadpat-us-vari... :-)
- yencabulator 4y agoWanna bet such a thing is there purely for copyright reasons?
- 72736379 4y agoI 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.
- seandavidfisher 4y agoSo what’s the rest of the story? Who was selected as the Phase IV winner?
- chriselles 4y agoCamouflage 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]