Hi all,


I have been spraying painting my last 2 vehicle with camo scheme....that this questions come to my mind again...Just thinking out loud....

Back when I was a recruit doing my National Services in Singapore, my drill instrcutor told us that we need to break the contour of our shape (helmet, rifle...) using leaves, tree branches....
so that someone from a distant cannot tell if anyone hiding in the bushes...

I guess that is why even the uniform is camofluage....and the same applys to vehicle...

When I was back for reservist 3 months ago, I saw the driver camofluaing their vehicle with tree branches, leave...

Given the technologies we have these days, thermal lens, Infra-red devices, NVG......how useful is camofluaging anymore especially to a heavy vehicles with the hot engine running that can be easily detected, both day or night time?

Ok...back to camo spray paint my next vehicle ...:-)

Is camo effective? I would say yes. but differant camo patterns are more effective then others. For example, I was watching a story on this on The History Channel some months ago, and I recall the new Marine MARPAt pattern Battle uniforms use a fabric that actually breaks up the soldiers heat signature, and make him somewhat less visible through thermal goggles. With regards to vehicles, you assume your enemy will have technology like NVG's or thermal sights. I dont recall the taliban having any technology like that. And as far as Iraq goes, the amount of advanced technology they had was very limited. So wether or not camo is effective depends greatly on who your fighting. From an outside perspective, I would say it is better to have it then not.

Having spent nearly a quarter century in, on and around armored vehicles, the camouflage pattern does not really matter. As long as the vehicle is in a color that blends into background, a specific pattern doesn't really do anything.

As soon as a vehicle has traveled through the terrain, it is coated in mud, dust or dirt. The neat and tidy camouflage pattern only really helps on a clean, unladen vehicle parked in environment it is camouflaged for. After that, as soon as it travels, it picks up the surrounding colors of the Earth it operates in.

A NATO camouflaged tank will blend in as well as an overall forest green one once both are covered in mud and dust. It's probably the reason why we never adopted a desert camouflage other than overall sand.

With Six years in the army as a MP the only time we camoflaged the vehicle (humvee) was when playing army in the woods setting up ambushes defiles and checkpoints. and the very rare times we set out on foot

I agree with Sabot on this one because I have seen firsthand a R&D program testing a soldier to ID a camouflage vehicle in an open field as if he was scanning the field with binoculars. The end result was that camouflage patterns on a vehicle really doesn't matter.

Long story short, the soldier was clicking on shadows he saw in the treeline, rocks he saw in the open, and things he thought were camouflage tents, or basically places HE'D park a vehicle. But low and behold, the vehicle was parked right on the side of the dirt road in plain view with no camouflage nets or leaves or cover whatsoever. It just blended into the surroundings visually.

The problem the soldier had was that he thought the vehicle was much larger or much smaller than the surrounding vegetation. He had no idea of scale...how high the trees where, how tall the grass was, how large the rocks were. When the computer IDed the vehicle, one can see that was a vehicle all right...and boy was the grass tall!

Camouflaging (spelling?) is an artform you could almost say. Remember going trough all this during my time with the Rangers in Sweden. Even camouflaged the tents that we were sleeping in, even that it was for just one single night....

NOT fun during the winter season.... :-)

Thats the way our tanks were painted, Forest green with 11th ACR and sand with the 3rd ACR Go Cav