Source: former military member.

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.

What camouflage is going to work anywhere where you are traveling miles per day to conquer territory, usually in cities?

> 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!

Best way not to be seen is to be lying prone in good cover. Ideally none of your uniform is visible to your targets, even if it was bright orange.

Think - positioning rather than magic fabric. That's my interpretation anyway.

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.

Well that just places it second or third, not last!

Your last line of defence is not being killed if you've been penetrated - your medical kit!

The first layer is probably "don’t be there" but yeah.

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.

With thermal imaging, do snipers still rely on camouflage?

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)

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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...

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I am convinced that we can use Davincis micro fluidics... turbulence drawings.

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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.

Working on this in Solid

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].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RK_62

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.

Ah, when you said "suppressor" I thought you meant "flash suppressor" but rereading I realize you meant "sound suppressor" like the GP.

From the Wikipedia article:

> In addition to the flash suppression, the end can quickly cut barbed wire by pushing the muzzle onto a strand of wire and firing a round.

What an interesting feature!

Possibly length is a factor

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.

I want to compare the modern versions of suppressions with the old designs of one-way-fluidic valves.

The reason:

Davinciy was cabable of documenting the vortices of variues pulses of fluidicsbut the vortices expecticed creates the fluid dynamics

Hopw the fuck in 400 years have these guys come NOT up with better?

I dont trust a single structural eng.

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.

I know.

"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.

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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.

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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?

Maybe relevant to your idea, if I'm understanding it correctly: you can put water in a suppressor to mitigate first round pop.

(pdf) heading 9: https://assets.surefire.com/uploads/2019/07/SF-BSD-manuals.p...

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.

Those aren't changes to the action, the core of how the rifle functions.

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_suppressor

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).

This was what I was talking about, but failed to articulate.

I think TempleOS started in a similar fashion…

Snipers need good camo, but the people snipers snipe don't?

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?

The vast firepower of modern armies would make it more important to not be seen in the first place, not less?

> 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.

Thanks, good info!

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 =)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M05

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.

[0] https://twitter.com/jmkorhonen/status/1504016338204905474

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

Sadly I'm a large blob of a single color