John Menick

I have had an ongoing interest in the culture of camouflage, particular when camouflage stops performing its primary function—hiding soldiers—and becomes something else. Soldiers protecting a gray Western city while dressed in green jungle camouflage provide a perfect example of how camouflage not only becomes divorced from its original purpose, but also reverses its role by drawing attention to soldiers.

So, while reading a recent article the Times published on the new Army Combat Uniform [ACU], this paragraph caught my attention:

The most obvious change is its digital-pixel camouflage, a blur of muted tones that many soldiers say seems best suited to desert combat. The old uniform, by contrast, came in bold black, brown, tan and green blotches. In Iraq, many soldiers have worn the older Desert Combat Uniform, a variation on the standard one, but with desert hues. But the new uniform, which will replace both the old one and its desert counterpart, has colors and a camouflage pattern that its designers say is effective in desert, “woodland” and urban combat. Having just one combat uniform saves the Army money.

Effective in three different contexts? Sounds doubtful, especially when the reporter reminds us about the added economic benefits of a three-in-one uniform.

I looked up more information on the uniform today and found that the excellent and indefatigable Tom Vanderbilt had written about the change back in September of 2004 for Slate:

The design energy applied to the ACU went mostly into making a uniform that would be invisible to foes but visible to comrades. Even a ceremonial detail like the traditional U.S. flag emblem has been khaki-ized into muted tan-and-blacks on some uniforms; no longer a symbol intended to be recognizable across the battlefield, it’s an infrared feedback element visible only to those equipped to see it.

He continues:

Making the ACU as invisible as possible required developing an entirely new “digital” camouflage pattern, derived from the Marine Corps’ so-called “MARPAT” camo scheme, which was launched in 2001. MARPAT is pixilated—bit-mapped on a computer, and then “printed” directly onto nylon. The effect is as if one had interrupted, at less than full resolution, the downloading of a picture of a traditionally camouflaged soldier, the stripes and whorls dissipating into pointillist bits. Unlike the old camo, digital camo suggests shapes and colors without actually being shapes and colors—like visual white noise. While it may serve a hunter well to appear to be part of a tree, a contemporary soldier needs to be on the move, and so his camouflage must help him blend into the “flow of space.”

And, like the Times article:

[The new camouflage is] a universal pattern capable of blending into desert, urban, and woodland environments. Second, the color black has been eliminated from the Army camouflage—the Army decided that it is disruptive in a camouflage scheme because it is not found in nature. Some designers, however, think black is necessary in a woodland setting; the places where the black in a camo pattern is most disruptive, it turns out, are urban and desert settings—which may tell us something about where soldiers will be spending their time in years ahead.

I’m sure some enterprising military historian will be following how the ACUs date – how perhaps, in a couple decades time, details like pixilation will seem more the stuff of ideology than forward-thinking design.

Related reading:

Wikipedia: Military Camouflage
How Stuff Works: Military Camouflage
Wired: Marines: Hiding a Few Good Men
Safe: Design Takes on Risk
Marine Uniform Plates
DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material – An Encyclopedia of Camouflage