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SGT Mathew Husen
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Army needs to go back to the BDU's and black boots.
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1LT William Clardy
1LT William Clardy
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First, 1SG (Join to see), can we agree that movement pretty much negates the effectiveness of camouflage? Second, consider the maximum range at which any printed pattern becomes distinguishable -- i.e., the maximum range at which that pattern will have any effect on your perception of shapes. Proper use of even minimal concealment to break up that actual outline of your body (standing, kneeling or laying behind obscuration) is orders of magnitude more effective than any small-scale color pattern filling that outline.
Or, looking at PFC Bradley Campbell's video, do you see any instance that a difference camouflage pattern would have seemed less noticeable?
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1SG Graphic Designer
1SG (Join to see)
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Sir you I’m not insulting your intelligence but that is simply not true. Single color uniforms are not the best uniform for concealment. The Germans had it figured out. A pattern at a distance would break up the silhouette by confusing the human brain. One thing your brain is always looking for when analyzing visual information is continuity. Imagine a stack of 12 blocks. If all of the blocks are colored red, you perceive the pile as one unit. But if the bottom six blocks are red and the top six blocks are blue, you may perceive the pile as two separate units: a stack of blue blocks on top of a stack of red blocks. And if you were to randomly mix blue blocks and red blocks together, you wouldn't group them into colored units at all. We tend to recognize something as a separate object if it has one continuous color, so a person is much more likely to stand out when wearing a single color than when wearing a jumble of colors. In the jungle, you perceive the jumble of colors in camouflage material as many small things that are component parts of the surrounding foliage. That’s why OCP is so great. Because the gradients and the color scheme works. For a large chunk of the world.
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1SG Graphic Designer
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1LT William Clardy
1LT William Clardy
>1 y
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Without writing a treatise to back up my off-the-cuff assertion, 1SG (Join to see), here are some of the underlying rationales behind it:
1) I specified "camouflage patterns currently in use" and "significantly more effective". I didn't say that patterning won't work, but that the current patterns don't make enough of a difference to justify the money being spent.
2) Beyond a certain range (determined by the scale of the shapes used), the actual pattern is no longer perceptible to the human eye -- it morphs into a semi-uniform blend of the pattern colors, which may or may not still provide a shape-disrupting visual effect. As a relevant datum, the old MERDC vehicle patterns we used in the 1980s were found to be visually effective in breaking up the apparent outline of a vehicle out to 800 meters in daylight, and about 400 meters using then-available NVDs.
3) The current clothing camouflage patterns are all what I will call "leaf-sized" - the shapes are sized to mimic small leaves (nobody will field anything with a larger-scale pattern because three or four big blotches of color on your shirt goes beyond uncool to looking downright ugly). What this means in practical terms is that, at the same distance leaves merge into a tree shape, the pattern merges into a person shape. I have crappy vision, so I don't know what that distance is for folks with good vision, but I'd wager that the max distance OCP is visually effective is not much more than 100 meters in clear daylight (and probably much less on most days).
4) Change the environment from summer to winter, forest to desert, day to night, or anything to urban, and any previously effective pattern becomes much less relevant than the contrast (or greater brightness) of the uniform with the background.
5) Any reduction in visibility (fog, rain, snow, dusk or night without NVDs) also reduces the effectiveness of any camouflage pattern.
6) Camouflage uniforms also don't negate other cues to your location, such as boot-prints in mud, the muzzle flash and blast from your M4, a radio antenna sticking up, you yelling at someone to shoot or move, the sound of a single twig snapping, where the vehicle you just dismounted from halted, or any movement.
7) Less than a quarter of casualties are inflicted by small-arms fire, and the portion which is the result of close-range aimed fire at a seen target is even smaller.
So how effective a uniform which can only make a difference at close range when stationary during daylight hours can be in terms of overall military combat operations?

p.s. I thought you might find this NVD image of an OCP jacket thought-provoking in light of your comment about single-color uniforms.
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SSG Environmental Specialist
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Did we not have a two set uniform for the seasons and they did away with it for the ACU, basically we are going full circle.
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SPC David Willis
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Why? Just why?
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