The Strike-Hold! blog brings you news of the ANA (Afghan National Army) and their new digital camo. Apparently, they don’t want to be camouflaged effectively for arid regions: more important to them is to look unlike any of the multinational forces in the region.
Some readers may recognise the pattern as Hyperstealth’s Spec4ce Forest. Click to read more of Lawrence’s post at Strike-Hold! or the blurb from Guy Cramer at Hypersteal
Interesting news from Canada this week – a sole-source tender has been announced for the development of an experimental urban camouflage (CUEPAT – Canadian Urban Environment Pattern) based on the metropolitan environments of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The tender makes mention of CBR (chemical, biological and radiological protection) in one sentence, though there is no indication as to whether this prototype camouflage is being developed solely for use on CBR clothing.
Urban environments are notoriously difficult to design effective human personnel camouflage for, as not only is the vertically oriented, rounded, organic shape of a person out of place amongst the hard edges, flat planes and bulky volumes of the man-made environment, but there also is no such thing as a typical urban colour scheme. Any number of greys, browns, creams and greens will be found in the typical city, not to mention all the hues of the spectrum that appear on advertising space, doors, façades and shop fronts, cars, trucks and buses – you name it.
My prediction is that without some pretty clever thinking by the design team, the outcome of this program will be a FAIL for effective camouflage, but a WIN for Army fashionistas and the B.S. brigade, just like UCP (Universal Camouflage Pattern) was for the US Army.
The sole-source tender is effectively a no-bid offer to Guy Cramer and Tim O’Neill of Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corporation, stating as it does that there are
no alternative sources of supply for this
requirement as no other Canadian source exists that has the
capability to design and develop digital, non-repeating
camouflage patterns using state-of-the-art fractal algorithms
and feed back loop technology, with concomitant IP protected
access to approximately 8,000 copyrighted patterns that can be
used in full support of meeting the requirement.
Although the terms of the tender allow competing companies to submit a bid, that bid must contain at least 80% goods and/or services of Canadian origin, and be submitted in writing before November 6th. Few, if any, of the other players in the digital camouflage industry are placed to take advantage of such a tightly constrained offer, meaning that however ineffective the design(s) submitted by Hyperstealth might be, the Canadian government will have no choice but to accept them.
There’s more on this story at Soldier Systems, and you can read the original tender as a pdf via this link.
The long and sorry saga of the US Army’s camouflage uniform woes in Afghanistan opened on a new chapter today. Readers will recall that the States’ Special Operations soldiers were dissatisfied with their current uniform, and are transitioning to new digital camouflage schemes. Then just 10 days ago my colleague at Strike-Hold! created a photo-shoot comparison of some likely candidates. Now the Army Times reveals that a trial is under way to compare Crye’s MultiCam with a new colourway of the Army’s existing, and much-maligned, Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), featuring Coyote Brown as a fourth colour. Coyote is currently a popular shade for plain coloured clothing and personal equipment; especially with those users who are employed in the Middle East or in South West Asia, and is also a component of the US Marines’ temperate MARPAT digital four colour camouflage.
The pattern apparently looks something like this (although I’m of the opinion that this particular image, which accompanied the Army Times article, has been faked using computer graphics software):
Is this the new U.S. Universal Camo?
According to the same Army Times piece, the pattern is called ‘UCP Delta’, and will be issued to a single battalion serving in Afghanistan in October, at the same time as another battalion there receives MultiCam. I don’t know how long the trial is expected to last, but I assume that the best performer will then go on to equip most Army units deployed in that theatre (although the recent history of US camo development shows that it is not always the case that the ‘winner’ officially wins).
But, surely, the whole point of issuing a universal camouflage is that you only need the one scheme? One scheme to rule them all! Whatever the outcome of this trial, with the Army on record as being satisfied with UCP in Iraq, and the Marines using their own Desert MARPAT, and now with SOCOM wearing variously MultiCam or their own take on MARPAT, is it still justifiable to even aspire to, let alone refer to, a universal camouflage pattern?
Over on Strike-Hold!, Lawrence has put together a bunch of photo’s showing how Bulldog’s Mirage camouflage compares to MultiCam and the US Army’s Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP). The States are re-evaluating their ground-troops’ camo uniform in the light of a less-than-satisfactory performance from their grey* toned UCP in Afghanistan. It’s expected that Crye’s MultiCam will participate in the contest, and maybe some other recently developed patterns will be in the running too. Lawrence’s photo shoot gives some idea of how these likely contenders appear side-by-side in the same light and environmental conditions.
Mirage, MultiCam, UCP side by side
*UCP’s colours are officially Desert Sand, Urban Gray and Foliage Green. To all intents and purposes that’s cream, light steel grey and medium slate grey.
A rumour came to my attention today. The rumour has it that James Cameron, director of classics such as The Terminator and Terminator 2, Aliens and the Abyss, as well as True Lies and Titanic, has been wearing my company’s PenCott digital fractal camouflage on the set of his latest film project: Avatar. The rumour appears to have grown from a photograph in the latest edition of Empire magazine, showing Cameron demonstrating how to man the door-gun of a troop transporter, wearing a pair of trousers in an unusual digital camouflage.
NOT gunning for PenCott. Copyright: Empire magazine
Much as I would love one of my movie idols to be wearing PenCott in association with a futuristic film, sadly he is not. His lower half seems to be clad in a commercial camo (note the bigger, more obvious pixels and the black areas). Should James Cameron like some genuine Hyde Definition trousers in our cutting-edge PenCott pattern, he is welcome to get in touch and I will happily furnish him with a pair or two, plus shirts and hats to boot. Someone pass the message to him, eh?
Anyone who got to see the Camouflage exhibition at the Imperial War Museum a couple of years ago will appreciate what a treat is in store for those able to make it to the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa this summer. The IWM exhibition has travelled across the pond, and is set to inform and inspire new audiences young and old with its immersive display of concealment techniques, from their hand painted origins in the First World War through to the ultra-modern trend for uniforms designed and manufactured with the aid of sophisticated computer programs.
fashion meets function at the Canadian War Museum's camo exhibition
Follow the link to see more about Camouflage, the exhibition – from battlefield to catwalk.
Unfortunately the exhibition has no examples of the PenCott digital multi-environment camouflage, since the pattern was still being trialled when the Imperial War Museum originally presented the show. However, the two British camoufleurs who inspired Hyde Definition’s creative approach to the design of PenCott feature prominently in the Second World War gallery – Professor Hugh Cott, scientist; and artist Sir Roland Penrose. They offered solutions to the problem of concealment from two sources – that of zoological evolution and of visual psychology. At Hyde Definition we combined these points of view, and thus named the pattern in memory of Penrose and Cott: PenCott.
Camouflage is presented by the Canadian War Museum in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, from June 4, 2009 to January 3, 2010.
In a follow up to a story I linked to earlier this year about an unusual camouflage pattern being worn by some US Navy SEALs (special operations forces), the Soldier Systems blog has acquired some information from the Advance Planning Brief for Industry (APBI) held recently in Springfield, VA. Apparently
the Program Manager for SOF Survival, Support, and Equipment Systems announced that two camouflage patterns known as AOR1 (Desert) and AOR2 (Wooded) would be transitioned in SOF and that certain contracted systems in Khaki and Ranger Green would move to the new color schemes.
These are digital camouflage schemes not dissimilar to the camouflage already issued to the US Marine Corps (Woodland MARPAT and Desert MARPAT). Some kit and clothing has already been manufactured for trials by Beyond Tactical, London Bridge Trading (LBT) and Eagle Industries, and at one point LBT had swatches of the colour ways on their website. What the announcement seems to be saying, however, is that the camouflage is not going to be limited solely to Naval Special Warfare personnel, as had previously been thought, but is for all units operating under USSOCOM (United States Special Operations Command).
Image from LBT website
Trial version (?) of AOR2 (thanks to Legit Kit NSW) with vertical alignment. Note different lighting conditions affect perceived colour.
Image from LBT website
Optical illusion meets student humour in some of the projects catalogued over on WebUrbanist.
It’s not all impractical, tax-payer funded flights of fantasy though: I particularly liked the idea of kamo kilts (for camo’d Celts?) – watch out for one of those in a neighbourhood near you!
Desert Marpat kilt
Predator Fall Brown kilt
Regular readers will remember me mentioning a design brief that my company Hyde Definition fulfilled last summer. It was to reduce the visual impact of a domestic wind turbine erected on private property in the UK, and the client wanted to be able to apply the design himself, in situ. Our website has recently been updated to include photographs of the turbine’s camouflage scheme, kindly supplied by our client.
Realising that it is practically impossibly to conceal an object as large and obvious as a wind turbine against the constantly changing skyscape behind it, we chose to break up the shape and use different tones that will blend in some, but not all, conditions.
The bespoke design uses two shades of grey, plus white, applied over the black polycarbonate gearbox nacelle and triangular fin in a pixellated quadrilateral symmetry-axis disruption pattern. In plain speak, picture a flat image of the turbine head, with a line running along the centre of the nacelle, and a line running down the middle of the fin. Imagine that lines also extend inward from all the corners and join the central lines near their ends. These are the axes of internal symmetry, which is not a name for the next James Bond film, but is the central mass that needs to be broken up in order to deceive the eye, which we achieved by using square and rectangular serrated shapes in different sizes and orientations.
Rothco camo compact
Rothco, well known for their outdoor and camouflage products, recently introduced this handy facepaint compact in 3 camouflage colours (that vaguely match the UCP theme of the tin). What`s good about this is its size and shape – it`s smaller than most rectangular compacts, and doesn`t have corners to poke you in your soft bits and wear through your pockets. Truly a compact compact. You ladies might have to wait a while for matching lipsticks, however.
