Multi-scale camouflage

The Canadian Forces were the first army to issue pixellated digital camouflage for all units with their disruptively patterned CADPAT.

Digital camouflage provides a disruptive effect through the use of pixellated patterns at a range of scales, meaning that the military camouflage helps to defeat observation at a range of distances.

History

The scale of camouflage patterns has an obvious effect on their use. Large structures need larger patterns than smaller vehicles and single soldiers to disrupt their shape. At the same time, large patterns are more effective from afar, while small scale patterns work better up close.

During the Second World War, Johann Georg Otto Schick designed a number of patterns for the Waffen-SS, combining micro- and macro-patterns in one scheme. The German Army developed the idea further in the 1970s into Flecktarn, which combines smaller shapes with dithering; this softens the edges of the large scale pattern, making the underlying objects harder to discern.

Pixellated shapes pre-date computer aided design by many years, already being used in Soviet Union experiments with camouflage patterns, such as "TTsMKK" developed in 1944 or 1945. The pattern uses areas of olive green, sand, and black pixels running together in broken patches at a range of scales.

In the 1970s, US Army officer Timothy R. O'Neill suggested that patterns consisting of square blocks of colour would provide effective camouflage. This aroused little interest at the time, but by 2000, O'Neill's idea was combined with patterns like the German Flecktarn to create pixellated patterns like CADPAT or MARPAT. Battledress in digital camouflage patterns was first designed by the Canadian Forces. The "digital" refers to the coordinates of the pattern, which are digitally defined. The term is also used of computer generated patterns like the non-pixellated Multicam and the Italian fractal Vegetato pattern.

According to the patent for MARPAT, pixellation does not in itself contribute to the camouflaging effect. The pixellated style, however, simplifies design and eases printing on fabric, compared to more traditional "splotchy" patterns. While pixellated patterns are becoming widespread, critics maintain that the pixellated look is a question of fashion rather than function. However, the basis of "digital" camouflage was lost in tech reports; the design technique actually has three purposes: (1) to add high spatial frequency texture components that add concealment at closer ranges, (2) to modify visual processing of edges, and (3) to produce intermediate colours by a dithering effect.

"Digitizing" a pattern does not of itself improve performance; the design process is actually more complex, and involves colour and contrast as well as overall disruptive effect of specific pattern geometry. A failure to consider all elements of pattern design tends to result in poor results. The US Army's universal camouflage pattern (UCP), for example, performed poorly because of low pattern contrast ("isoluminance" — beyond very close range, the design looks like a field of solid light gray) and arbitrary color selection, neither of which could be saved by quantizing (digitizing) the pattern geometry.