The Strategy Page has a piece up on China ordering digital camouflage.

China is spending over a billion dollars to buy new combat uniforms for its troops. The new uniforms use a digital camouflage pattern similar to the one used by American soldiers and marines for the past four years.

Digital camouflage uses “pixels” (little square or round spots of color, like you will find on your computer monitor if you look very closely), instead of just splotches of different colors. Naturally, this was called “digital camouflage” when it was first invented three decades ago. This pattern proved considerably more effective at hiding troops than older methods. For example, in tests, it was found that soldiers wearing digital pattern uniforms were 50 percent more likely to escape detection by other troops. What made the digital pattern work was the way the human brain processed information. The small “pixels” of color on the cloth makes the human brain see vegetation and terrain, not people. One could provide a more technical explanation, but the “brain processing” one pretty much says it all.

Another advantage of the digital patterns is that they can also fool troops using night vision scopes. American troops are increasingly running up against opponents who have night optics, so wearing a camouflage pattern that looks like vegetation to someone with a night scope, is useful.

China will take two years to get nearly two million troops equipped with the new uniforms. There are four camouflage patterns (urban, forest, desert and ocean), although the woodland pattern  also works in urban areas, just not as well as the special urban pattern. The new uniforms have a lot of other improvements, based on feedback from the troops. The new uniforms are also sturdier, and are able to survive 700 washings, versus about 140 with the current uniforms.

The U.S. Army developed digital camouflage in the 1970s. Lieutenant Colonel Timothy R. O’Neill, a West Point professor of engineering psychology, had first noted the “digital camouflage effect.” It was never adopted for use in uniforms, but was used for a camouflage pattern on armored vehicles of the U.S. Army 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Europe from 1978 to the early 1980s. Why hadn’t the army adopted it for uniforms back in the 1970s? It seems that the key army people (uniformed and civilian) deciding such things in the 1970s could not grasp the concept of how digital camouflage worked on the human brain, and were not swayed by field tests. Strange, but true, and it’s happened before. In 2003, the U.S. Army decided to use digital camouflage patterns for their new field uniforms. A few years after that, China expressed an interest in the concept, for their new field uniforms.

More interesting than the article is a comment associated with the article.

I tend to be a little dubious about ‘the next big thing’ in camouflage patterns.  It’s been my experience that once you strap on all your gear and get covered in dust and mud, no one can see what your uniform looks like anyway.  Durability and more convenient pocket placement is far more important.

Here we have an interesting anecdotal piece of evidence for Department of Defense inefficiency.  The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, and vice versa.  Below is a pitcure of Marines being outfitted with the new Modular Tactical Vest that I have covered in Body Armor Wars: The Way Forward, and Body Armor Goes Political.

The intent of digital camies is to provide stealth.  The intent of body armor is to protect against penetration of deadly rounds.  The body armor outer tactical vest (the carrier for the soft ballistic panels and ESAPI plates) is not constructed of digital camouflage, and yet the system covers all of the upper torso (protecting the whole body organs) and some of the groin, thereby negating the effects of the digital camouflage blouse (and the picture above is not of desert camies which would be worse in comparison).

Commercial industry struggles with miscommunication and lack of coordination as well.  No one intends for this to happen, but the end result is that the body armor system and the digital camouflage are not compatible, in that the digital pattern of the camies (or more correctly the lack of pattern) is broken with the armor system.  The same is true of other gear, whether radios, carriers for ammunition drums for SAW gunners, or other things that the warrior needs to carry on his mission.

The solution for this disconnect involves two things: (a) more money for the DoD, and (b) better coordination among the planners, engineers and procurement specialists.