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unclephil69 — Marpat Experiment
Published: 2019-10-02 11:59:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 103; Favourites: 8; Downloads: 6
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Description
Walking behind someone wearing Marpat it occured to me that perhaps it would work better if the elements were bigger.Related content
Comments: 13
Well, it might look better but would it be any better in desert terrain, have you got a mannequin with original Desert Marpat on, to compare. Welcome back! Any camouflage stuff on your blog lately?
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Careful what you wish for!
phillosoph.blogspot.com/2019/1…
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I feel so privileged to be mentioned in dispatches! All very relevant points about the effectiveness of camouflage, the points are true! Snipers are static so tend to pay more attention to all your points, modern ordinary infantry Western doctrine dictates that they have to have more manoeuvrability and not be encumbered with heavy camouflage. Whereas Eastern Asiatic doctrine in the past as gone the other way, particularly in defence operations. Hence why the Americans lost in Vietnam, well one of the reasons anyway!
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There is a stupid idea that camouflage is a specialist field, and hence only the province of snipers et al. The first major users of personal camouflage outfits where the Soviets, who mainly used it for scounts and combat engineers as well as snipers. The manoeuverability arguement pratt-falls when you remember the same infantry are being sent of four-hour patrols with enough underware, food and stuff to last them a week. The weight argument further fails when you consider how British infantry paid attention to camo in the 80s. Also, I brought a kilo of camo offcuts that I used for a cape, hat and three rucksacks, and I still have more than half left, so adding effective textilage cannot be objected to on grounds of weight.
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Your points are all very well thought out! The British army in the 1980s are a very good example of the proper appliance of camo, what changed after that though, they seem to have lost that edge! MTP works to some extent in some regions but is not perfect for every region but neither was Woodland DPM. So how would you go about changing our armies current doctrine!?
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I have spent decades writing about alternate doctrine, so I assume you just mean wrt camouflage. While DPM is too dark in some context, MTP is effectively a monotone, so I regard it as worse, as well as a waste of money that could have been used better off elsewhere. British army has to stop copying the Americans and accept that it has more experience and better insight in many areas.
The primary doctrine change I would attempt is to get across the concept that combat wear is distinct from daily/ barrack wear. Combat wear is specialist clothing and should be the opposite of "uniform".
I would introduce a smock loose enough to fit over armour. This would have scrimm and other textilage fitted, as would the webbing it is worn with. Combat trousers would be loose enough to fit over knee-pads, perhaps with features to make the easily removed in the event of leg injury. There would be a non-helmet shaped helmet-cover with textilage. This may resemble the Israeli beret and also be capable of being worn on its own or with a headover or boonie hat. Yes, it would look hideous, but it is something not to be seen in. Some means to easily camouflage rifles and MGs needs to be issued, or have a stock of rifles for parades and another for real work.
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So what would you recommend for an improved British camo pattern, be good to see what you would come up with! A smock but what camo would work for you? So camo your weapons with stencils... but what if you changed from desert to temperate areas in the same region?
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You do not use stencils. Camouflage needs to be three-dee. One of the oldest dodges is probably the best. Make a sleeve for the fore-end and barrel from a sandbag or strip of generic camo. Add a few bows and knots. This can easily be removed if you have to parade. Chose browns and greys that will not look out of place in most environments.
For smocks the best OTS is probably "desert flecktarn" (tropentarn) or four-colour desert DPM. MTP and old DPM can be shredded to provide some of the textilage.
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Stencils do look a bit flat but better than the metal blackness of an un camoed weapon. The texiflage is a great way to cover up the shape of the weapon!
OTS, don't like acronyms what that stand for!? All great camo patterns you have mentioned, can you still get Four desert colour DPM?
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The original desert DPM was standard DPM with the green omitted, and thus three-colour. One of the countries that was sold to was Iraq. Decades later the army found itself about to enter a desert war with no suitable camouflage pattern, it not having occurred to the people that count that the army might need to fight in the sandy, oil-filled places where most modern conflicts had occurred. Three-colour desert was out, since the enemy was wearing it. Black was removed and two-colour desert was born. Four colour DPM in desert shades can be found on ebay. Not aware of any genuine military usage, but it has potential.
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I think Argentina has a 3/4 colour pattern called Patagonia and Iran uses or used a version at one time or another! So there are still armies that use good old DPM! Long may it reign!
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Camopedia is a good source since it has some pattern-specific pages. camopedia.org/index.php?title=…
I believe the special forces of a couple of nations issue DPM-lookalikes.
While the patterns and blob shape are good, the colours of the originals seem too dark and too green, and the brown used on some versions way too chocolate. Vary rarely do you encounter browns that dense and that hue in nature or even urban environments.
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I have to agree with you there, the browns +greens are too dark in the Soldier 95 especially, I prefer the original 1960-68 DPM colours, they were a bit more versatile in the regions where it worked well! What was their rationale in changing the greens and browns in the Soldier 95 variety?
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