I understand that a camouflage uniform could work for someone hidden in a forest as its patterns help you blend in.
but, how the black and grey “urban camouflage” pattern make soldiers harder to find in an urban setting? I don’t see how that helps you blend in with the walls of buildings
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So I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of camo as a function. You’re not supposed to always blend in like a ghilie suit, as much as you’re just not supposed to look like a human outline against the backdrop.
Urban camo is surprisingly effective at doing this. There was a photo of some Korean soldiers doing urban training and you had to LOOK for them in the photo because they were crouched by a wall and a shelf and didn’t register as a human pattern. I can’t find it unfortunately but maybe someone else will have it.
You’re not gonna use it against a blank wall necessarily, but maybe you’ll hug a pile of rubble and fade into the outline of the pile, or you come around a street corner with a bunch of shit on it and you look more like the backdrop than a person.
All you really need to buy is enough time to see the other guy before they see you
Multicam Black is meant to be “authoritative” and “intimidating”. I don’t think it’s meant to blend it.
It probably has some utility for breaking up your silhouette but any dark fabric would probably do the same.
>”It projects a distinctly authoritative presence appropriate for domestic operations. MultiCam Black™ is designed to complement an officer’s existing equipment and present a sharp, professional image for top-tier law enforcement units.”
The point of camouflage isn’t necessarily to blend in with the same colors as the background, but to break up the outline of the wearer. An enemy soldier is looking for the shape of a person, so if the clothing can distort that shape, the soldier will be harder to spot.
To expand on what others are saying camouflage is to break up the outline of a human shape, because if your brain does not recognize a human shape it won’t see it. It won’t not see a human shape it just won’t see anything, your eyes will but your brain will omit that information because it doesn’t have it.
If you have ever watched someone “appear” from a camouflaged position you know the feeling I’m talking about.
Not military but I played a lot of woodsball (paintball)
Camouflage doesn’t work against a plain background 20m away, it works very well against a cluttered background 400m away which is where most engagements take place. Have a buddy put some camo on and tell them to go crouch and hide against some buildings a few hundred meters away then try and pick them out at a distance. It will be significantly harder, now imagine how much harder it would be if there’s bullets flying overhead and you see how effective camo can be.
What others have said is correct, but also keep in mind that if you’re fighting a war in an urban environment, there’s likely going to be blown up concrete and dust everywhere. It’s not necessarily designed to blend into a normal, intact urban environment.
The human brain is absolutely fantastic at pattern and shape recognition, it’s thought to have been one of our big evolutionary advantages- it helps us see predators and prey really quickly and effectively. So that enables us to pick other humans out of the background even if they should be really hard to see, it’s almost like we shortcut the normal, slow, difficult process of “seeing things and understanding them and jump direct to “this jumps out”.
So rather than it making you look like the background, like a more natural camoflague does, what it’s mostly doing is making you look less like a person.
(there’s some other really interesting uses for this instinct- one I really like is that Honda made a motorbike which was designed to look to our instinctive brains like a face. The idea is that the bits of our brain that spots tigers hiding in the bushes also picks out the bike and helps riders be seen even by bad or careless drivers)
Camo is less about blending in with colour and more about morphing shape. You’re looking for a human shaped outline, the pattern in urban camo can make a human look like a handful of different construction like shapes against a building.
It’s not going to work 10ft in front of you looking directly at it, but if you’re scanning your surroundings it’s easy to miss
Additionally, uniforms are designed to confuse sensors. You might have seen “digital camo” that is it’s purpose.
one important thing to note about camouflage as a whole is that it’s point is not ot blend in with color, but ti break up your outlines.
this is how camouflage works evne in nature, ie its the reason why tigers are striped, the goal is to break up their outlines whe nthey are hiding in tall brush(the reason they are orange is because green is basically impossible ot have on fur for mammals but the common prey animals of tigers see orange as dark greys)
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