History of Digital Camouflage

[Darius137]

Link:
http://pdxtac.com/2035/general-posts/th ... amouflage/

Has a lot of interesting information. MARPAT was designed to be wet. Coyote Brown was designed for soccer moms to paint their houses in "Santa Fe" style, and the Army uses an inkjet printer to print patterns off and place in the woods at set distances to decide which camouflage works best.

[Solid]

Ew digital. I heard we are switching to a 3 pattern system for the Army as well, one of them is "rattlesnake pattern," been trying to find out what that's actually called. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

[LiquidSnak]

I think the army needs to calibrate their printer, since ACU sucked so bad.

[Darius137]

Ew digital. I heard we are switching to a 3 pattern system for the Army as well, one of them is "rattlesnake pattern," been trying to find out what that's actually called. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

You're probably thinking of Kryptek. The link to Kryptek's patterns is in the post.

I call it snowboarderflage, since it looks like snowboarder camouflage. But then I read an article that says it's a small hunter company in Alaska, so I kinda want them to do well.

Of the four finalists, there is Crye (Multicam), Kryptek (Snowboarder camo), Brookwood (watercolor-flage) and ADS/Hyperstealth (bland digital pattern).

The pattern submitted by the Government was too similar to the ones entered civilian side, and was dropped. All they entered was an old pattern from the first set of trials that ended up with ACUPAT, with slight variation since then. It was shit. These patterns are shit.

;klasjkfsakdfakl;sdkl;

[Osprey]

I thought the Army just recently started using MUTICAM. Why I change it now? Apparently from what I heard here on AP MUTICAM was great.

[SleepyDave]

Big Army decided that since UCP didn't work, it means ALL UNIVERSAL CAMO IS SHIT, so they're panicking and want a family of patterns. If they simply started issuing the OEF pattern on ACU cuts, they'd probably save themselves a lot of drama. It would brand the branch (since apparently Armies can now be branded like toilet paper), ease the transition (since a lot of folks already have it), support existing pipelines of logistics (not having to completely reissue every pouch a soldier carries), and simply improve morale.

Instead, they want to basically do UCP over again, making it harder than it needs to be just to release a new set of uniforms. Nevermind what products exist and are well supported on the market, they want to be fancy.

Multicam, from what I've seen and heard, worked really well in AFG, seemed to do pretty well in limited use in Iraq, and most soldiers generally rated Multicam as better than UCP. Obviously the idea of Universal Camo is fraught with problems (can you imagine Multicam in Panama or Vietnam?), but its a good concept that would really ease the burden of issue. Unfortunately, Big Army wants to fight the wars of tomorrow using the lessons of yesterday, but can't be bothered to pay attention to today.

[Darius137]

Multicam isn't that great, and is fairly old. It works in Afghanistan, but it is used by everyone. It isn't the best pattern available and the lack of pixels is inferior. It is important in the fact that it found a more realistic "universal" color scheme. PenCott Badlands is improved, digital MC/OCP. Also theater specific patterns for warfighters (as opposed to fobbits) is a solid idea.

[STRIK3]

I think the army needs to calibrate their printer, since ACU sucked so bad.

It has its place.

[yandle]

Badass, that's me and my MP5 as the header of the website.

[Osprey]

it could be.

[Solid]

I like the Kryptek shit, it's so weird looking that it might be cool. If anything, I get to be a rattlesnake.

[Orwell]

Problem with ACU is that for everyone one picture of it working, there are 50 pictures of Multicam, Woodland, or other patterns working better.

In an ideal world, there would be a camouflage pattern for every environment. That's why ghillie suits leave room for natural foliage.

The way I see it, there is no problem with ACU, just the misusing it. As said above, it has its place.

[Darius137]

Problem with ACU is that for everyone one picture of it working, there are 50 pictures of Multicam, Woodland, or other patterns working better.

In an ideal world, there would be a camouflage pattern for every environment. That's why ghillie suits leave room for natural foliage.

The way I see it, there is no problem with ACU, just the misusing it. As said above, it has its place.

Everything that ACUPAT does, something else does it better, and is not as horrible at other stuff.

The ONLY place that ACUPAT shined in testing was during the night vision tests, since apparently pixels + grey = good for blending in NVGs.

[VogonFord]

While admittedly I've never used a night vision device, I've never seen an appreciable difference in camouflaging ability between MARPAT, Flecktarn and M81 at range. Close up M81 falls behind due to its large pattern, but at a more realistic combat distance for real firearms (100m to 500m) the three are all good at what they do. I've never seen the massive advantage that digital supposedly gives.

[Orwell]

While admittedly I've never used a night vision device, I've never seen an appreciable difference in camouflaging ability between MARPAT, Flecktarn and M81 at range. Close up M81 falls behind due to its large pattern, but at a more realistic combat distance for real firearms (100m to 500m) the three are all good at what they do. I've never seen the massive advantage that digital supposedly gives.

You know, I keep trying to compare camouflages at range, but every time I go to an op I only see people at close range. It's like they all hide whenever they're far away!