Does every army in every country have a different uniform? Or do they all wear camouflaged suits or something.
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In general, different armies have different uniforms exactly for that reason! Even if they are using camouflage, they tend to pick different colors and styles, because it is important that your soldiers are able to spot their allies and not shoot them.
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Different uniforms, identifying colors in helmets/on person, passwords/codewords and just generally if you’re being shot at it’s likely it’s the enemy firing. Also officers are briefed which direction enemy is at and they brief their people.
Comms, comms, comms. Very important.
Apart from uniform identification, you typically know where you’re supposed to have friendly forces.
If a street has friendlies chances are they relayed that and your team knows about it.
But, shit happens, sometimes shit doesn’t get passed along or there’s confusion as it often happens in war and friendly fire incidents are not unheard of.
It’s difficult!
Countries that fight each other generally will have different camouflage patterns, but not always. (Especially for vehicles, it seems, for some reason.) That’s one reason you see Ukrainian soldiers wearing yellow armbands and Russian vehicles with Zs painted on them.
But hiding is really important in war. If you can see someone well enough to go “that’s enemy camouflage!” the camouflage isn’t doing its job well. So you can’t always tell by sight. Often soldiers will be shooting at other people they can barely see – or might want to shoot, just as long as they can be sure they’re not friendly.
One way to help with this is the simple (in theory) practice of knowing where your guys are and what they’re doing. If you’re launching an attack, know that the rough plan is for this squad to move here, that squad to move there. To know that there are survivors of a friendly unit in this area, but everyone has been pulled back from that area.
A good “command, control and communications” system will keep your side up-to-date. Your squad manages to rush on ahead, you radio in to tell your platoon HQ, and they tell others.
A simple principle, but very hard to manage in practice.
Aircraft also have “identification, friend or foe” systems, since they’re often shot at without being seen. These lets a friendly aircraft or ground system ping them and check if they respond with a ‘friendly’ code. I’m not sure if any other vehicles have incorporated these; I don’t think so.
It’s a requirement by international law to keep identifying patches and insignia and the like on your uniform, and same goes for vehicles and encampments. Most countries don’t use the same pattern or camouflage or recognizable silhouette of equipment they carry.
But sometimes they do. Right now, Ukraine and Russia carry more or less identical equipment loadouts and camouflage – recent NATO supplies to Ukraine notwithstanding. Even if not, insignia can be difficult to spot in combat. So they’ve been using colored armbands and tape on their helmets – blue and yellow for Ukrainian, while Russian units have red and orange and other colors, maybe St George’s Ribbon. This is also why the big Z is a thing (and O and V and whatever other letters they had), they wanted to mark their own gear to avoid friendly fire, which can be difficult in a chaotic environment such as an invasion. This is also why aircraft involved in D-Day have those black and white stripes on the wings. Generally it’s far better for your survival to be obviously friendly to friendlies even if it makes you more obviously an enemy to enemies. This is even more important if you’re part of a large coalition or have foreign equipment supplied to you, so you can see that everyone is on the same side even if they all look different.
It’s also important if you capture enemy gear and plan to use or move it to mark it for friendlies. You’ll see Russian vehicles with the Z spraypainted over while flying a Ukrainian flag for example.
Depending on circumstances other things may be used, for instance in Iraq orange panels were placed on coalition vehicles, or IR strobes which could only be seen by night vision on friendly forces in other conflicts, though those were phased out as night vision became more common amongst enemies.
They often don’t. In the Gulf War, 24% of U.S. deaths were due to friendly fire. In general, per Wikipedia:
*The Oxford Companion to American Military History estimates that between 2 percent and 2.5 percent of the casualties in America’s wars are attributable to friendly fire.[8]*
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire#History*
Most oftenly countries use diffrent camos
In a situation like Ukraine where both sides like to use the same one,sides had started putting colorfull tapes around their uniforms to signal who are they fighting for.
Despite what others said, camouflage uniforms are pretty similar and their goal is to blend with the environment, which is the opposite of making them stand out as different than other armies’ uniforms.
Friendly fire is actually a serious situation that happens throughout all eras of warfare. Even NATO on Afghanistan which was a situation of modern army vs guerillas had the usual number of friendly fire incidents and casualties. Good communication between units and military inteliggence are key to avoiding such incidents.
Besides modern IFF systems that large countries use, electronic systems in airplanes and vehicles, a lot of time is dedicated to being able to visually identify friendly’s. If you are on a ship you’re going to be trained in what the silhouettes of different ships look like and how to identify enemy planes versus friendly planes visually. On the battlefield you might have a call and response system, a code word that you’re given in case you’re challenged by a soldier. You might put different patches or symbols on the back of your helmet so that you aren’t shot in the back by your friendlies. You can also have an IR strobe on you That can be identified through the use of night vision goggles. You’ll do the same thing with the vehicles you’re driving, or the ships you’re sailing.
Even with all these precautions friendly fire does happen frequently in war. You might think a Japanese zero might look completely different from a P-40, but in World War II friendly fire was a big problem. German planes used to protect airfields would color their airplanes very uniquely in order to not be shot out by friendly AAA guns. Similarly during D-Day, Allied transport aircrafts also painted “invasion stripes” on their airplanes so that friendlies wouldn’t shoot them down.
At some point, If you’re a very powerful nation like the United States friendly fire starts to become the most dangerous aspect of war. In a modern war versus a country that can barely resist, you’re more likely to be killed by friendly fire or accidents rather than enemy fire.
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