Modern Camouflage

mr.moon1488

mr.moon1488

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Something that's never made sense to me is why modern militaries don't just directly plagiarise local fauna's camouflage. It wouldn't be hard to produce, and you already know it works well since natural selection has decided it's the ideal pattern for concealment in that region.

There is actually a snow leopard hiding in this photo, and it took me a while to find it despite the article telling me it was there, and me actively looking for it.

snow-leopard-in-the-wild-1.jpg
 
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They probably do in small amounts for very specific operations but my best guess is that it would be too expensive to make hundreds of thousands of uniforms for each and every possible microclimate variation.

Within the next few decades, wearable LCD "fabric" that can change with the environment will make most current camouflage patterns obsolete anyway.
 
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I understand it's a joke but I don't think camouflage is generally effective at close range, like in a locker room, unless there's lots of ambient shadows or foliage to hide in anyway.
 
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sasazuka said:
I understand it's a joke but I don't think camouflage is generally effective at close range, like in a locker room, unless there's lots of ambient shadows or foliage to hide in anyway.
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I'm talking sci fi technology that would project your surroundings onto a suit, not something with a pattern on it.

I could imagine you could just stand still in a corner of a shower room and if no one was expecting you to be there they may not notice you even if someone looking very closely could tell.

I wonder if steam would mess it up though.
 
The wearable LCD technology I was imagining was more just matching the general ambient colours of the environment, not turning "invisible" like in Ghost in the Shell, which is probably not something that will be feasible any time in the near future since you'd have to take into account every potential viewing angle for that to work.
 
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Because it's too expensive and wasteful to make millions of uniforms and gear for one specific local environment, and soldiers aren't like hunters that just stand still all day. The main purposes of camouflage in military applications is to break up the human silhouette and identify allied or enemy troops, and in some cases defeat night vision. It's best to have a woodland/forest/jungle pattern and a desert pattern, maybe even a seasonal and/or snow pattern in some rarer cases. Universal camouflage hasn't worked well either, at best it's OK in MOST areas and at worst it's an expensive waste of taxpayer money that gets soldiers killed.
 
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Reminder, the Navy just got done using this camo for 10 years.
water camo.jpg

If you served between 2009 and 2019, the US Navy was actively making it easier for you to die due to their uniforms being camouflaged for the open sea, AND flammable.
 
Son of Odin said:
Because it's too expensive and wasteful to make millions of uniforms and gear for one specific local environment, and soldiers aren't like hunters that just stand still all day. The main purposes of camouflage in military applications is to break up the human silhouette and identify allied or enemy troops, and in some cases defeat night vision. It's best to have a woodland/forest/jungle pattern and a desert pattern, maybe even a seasonal and/or snow pattern in some rarer cases. Universal camouflage hasn't worked well either, at best it's OK in MOST areas and at worst it's an expensive waste of taxpayer money that gets soldiers killed.
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This. Since camo that works in every environment isn't possible, and the extremely specialized camo OP is talking about would mean producing lots of very specialized camo in small amounts, which would skyrocket the cost (plus soldiers would have to change uniforms a lot), the military settles on a compromise.
 
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