Camouflage moves into the digital age

A useful introduction to modern military camouflage at The Economist:

Even the most common form of camouflage — the coloured patterns printed onto combat fatigues — is being given a high-tech twist, as designers work with new software that incorporates neuroscientists' understanding of human vision. Pattern-generation software analyses a large number of photographs of a given theatre of operations. By crunching meteorological data on typical lighting and visibility conditions, combined with information about the colours and predominance of shapes visible in cities, fields and wilderness areas, the software proposes new, improved patterns. "It really does get technical," says Réjean Duchesneau, a lieutenant-colonel with NATO in Casteau, Belgium, who helped design a Canadian camouflage pattern called CADPAT.

Some camouflage designers, including those at America's Army Research Laboratory, also study the reflective and light-absorbing properties of materials common to an area, such as sand, cement and foliage. As well as being used by the camouflage-generation software, this information is used to manufacture fabric inks with the desired optical properties. Similar software optimises colours and patterns for vehicles and aircraft. The ability to customise camouflage for particular theatres has increased the use of temporary camouflage, which is painted on hardware before missions and washed off afterwards.

For decades most fatigues, now referred to as battledress uniforms, incorporated wiggly patterns of solid colours known as tiger stripes. But research in the field of "clutter metrics" — the study of how well observers locate and identify objects — has recently discredited tiger stripes. With the help of eye-tracking devices that follow iris movements to determine where subjects are looking, researchers have determined that fabrics with small squares of colour, known as pixels, are harder to see. These new pixel patterns are now worn by many Western armies, including those of the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Germany. Canada has improved its camouflage so much in recent years that to spot soldiers in some conditions, observers must be 40% closer than they would have to have been in 2000.

<Old grognard mode>In my day, we didn't have no fancy printed camo . . . we used natural materials to camouflage ourselves and our equipment.</Old grognard mode> — and we've have been shot to pieces at long range by today's troops out of positions we probably had no chance of seeing before we were in their range . . . Actually, aside from the Canadian Airborne Regiment's jump smocks, the combat uniform of my day was just drab green, with no disruptive pattern at all (our helmet covers were in a camo pattern, and — of course — we had white winter shells).