US Army camouflage (UCP) simply doesn't work

© Thimbleweed - Creative Commons.

Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) had been hailed as a wonder solution to the age old camo problem of how to make camouflage work across all terrain. Typically countries issue different camouflage for different theatres: desert, snow, countryside or urban. So when the computer designed UCP claimed to work in all theatres it seemed a BINGO! moment.

With one small problem: it didn't work (ref here and here).

Check out the following article which outlines the problem and the history of camouflage very nicely:

"All digital camo has two layers: a micropattern (the pixels) and a macropattern (the shapes the pixels form). If the scale of the macro blobs is too small—as they are with UCP—it triggers an optical phenomenon called "isoluminance," rendering the carefully-constructed camo pattern into a light-colored mass. In other words, it makes it incredibly easy to spot targets from a distance. That was one of the biggest problems with UCP"