TRZIN, SLOVENIA (28t h February 2019)—UF PRO® said today its range of best-in-class Striker tactical gear will be offered in an innovative camouflage pattern that provides cloaking effectiveness like no other thanks to its prowess at sending subconscious brain signals into disarray.
The new pattern is called CONCAMO—or, “confusion camouflage”—which employs a novel and highly sophisticated design to prevent the mind from correctly making sense of information supplied by the eyes while gazing in the direction of a CONCAMO wearer, according to Armin Wagner, head of product development for UF PRO®, maker of advanced- technology jackets, shirts, pants, hats, caps, and accessories for military and law- enforcement units.
“CONCAMO scrambles brain signals way down deep, at the subconscious level,” Wagner explained. “It does a remarkable job of keeping wearers hidden, even when they are literally just meters away from the observer. It makes the wearer invisible to an extent that really must be experienced to be fully appreciated.”
Wagner said Striker tactical gear available in CONCAMO will include:
• Striker HT Combat Pants
• Striker XT Combat Shirt
• Striker XT Combat Jacket
• Striker Gen.2 Boonie Hat
Striker tactical gear, he noted, is a favourite of Europe’s elite special-forces.
“We think CONCAMO will be a huge hit with our customers not just in Europe but far beyond,” Wagner offered, adding that Striker products are recognized the world over for their extreme durability, superior comfort, and extraordinary utility.
CONCAMO’s patented special pattern arrangement features 8 colours blended through various elements and shadings to produce more than 60 layers of perceivable depth,” he continued. “It’s an incredibly effective concealment system that works beautifully in a spectrum of environments—forests, grasslands, deserts, mountainous snow country, even urban areas.”
Wagner indicated that CONCAMO was developed in Germany by respected designer Matthias Bu?rgin.
“Bu?rgin was just 17 when he designed a very effective collection of
three-dimensional camouflage nets,” Wagner said. “As an adult serving with a
special military unit, his knowledge of camouflage patterns and the science behind them increased exponentially.
Later, back in, civilian life, he acquired expertise in perceptual psychology and applied those insights to the design of advanced-technology camouflage patterns. CONCAMO represents his current pinnacle of achievement.”
Find out more about UF PRO Tactical Gear in CONCAMO here.
For more information about the UF PRO® Striker tactical gear range along with other UF PRO® products, go to ufpro.com.
Subconscious camo?
All camo works from “just meters away” as long as it’s in the cherry-picked, ideal environment.
The bigger issue with camo (all camo) is how it works at distance. The human eye can’t see fine detail at distance. Think about it, how many of us can see 1” pasties on a target at 100yds? None, right? It all just looks like a giant white target…
At distance, camo begins to go monochromatic because of this. Beyond any certain distance, all patterns begin to morph into a single, homogenous, color.
The ACU’s had this issue and just appear a solid blue/gray color beyond 100yds. Multicam does this, appearing a solid green/brown. Woodland turns solid green beyond 100 as well. Black multicam is the same, and presents a solid black human shape at distance.
Small, irregular, colored, 1” blobs of color may look good while viewing from across the room, but at distance, the human eye cannot resolve that level of detail. All those fine details are lost as the eye see only the base color of the overall palette. (A green, or blue, or black, etc…)
The challlenge, I believe, lies in finding a pattern that morphs on the macro scale, so that at distance, it is not a single color.
I’m going to oversimplify, but imagine a uniform with the sleeves made of ACU pattern. The torso made of multicam, and the pants are Kryptek or something… At 100yds, instead of a single blob, it would be a pattern still. A mix of the ACU (gray) the MCam (brown/green) and the Kryptek (whatever that color would be). Still a pattern, still breaking up the human outline, still effective at max eyeball range.
Humans are amazing at seeing other humans. We routinely ‘see’ the most random patterns, or shapes, and imagine them as human. We see faces in clouds, a face on the moon, and even faces on burnt pieces of toast. We put together minimal information into composite images of humans. Any camo pattern that doesn’t address this simple fact will have the same issues beyond 50yds.
The key to effective camo would seem to be focusing (dad joke) on this at the macro level.
Which is done. Just look at the patterns painte on vehicles, which use much bigger splotches to break up the outline of a vehicle at longer distance. When close and the engine running you cannot really hide after all.
Another example is the adaption of the ERDL pattern as Woodland in the eighties by enlarging the whole pattern to make it better at concealment at longer distance compared to the really short distances in the jungles of Vietnam. Mulitcam sctually tunrs either more brown or green depending on the sorrounding environment because of its macro pattern to break up the wearer at longer distances and blend in better at longer ranges. Or so the theory goes. To me the very brownish green sticks out like a sore thumb, when I see GIs or Tommys on German exercise areas. Or look at photos from the baltic NATO exercises. Too green area there.
The problem with multicam and mtp is that they are too light period, especially in dark or green areas. It would have been wise to darken every color and have something closer to AMCU/Australian.
I agree and have asked pretty much the same thing of camo manufacturers for the same reasons. Unless seen against a matching background, all camos becomes a human-shaped blob unless there’s a macro pattern.
I’m reminded of pictures of British soldiers that wore desert trousers and DPM jackets, that broke up that human figure in half. It also made sense for environments with little vegetation on the ground.
I’d like to see a uniform with an asymmetrical overall tone – lighter sleeve on one side than the other etc. Different coloured legs. Basically something that from a distance, will break up that human blob into three of four parts.
Matthias Bürgin really has a hand in marketing his invention to big tactical textile purveyors (;)) it looks like.
Said it before, and I’ll say it again: Camouflage uniforms are a dubious proposition, at best. Sure, they look cool, but… Once that pretty pattern is overlaid by dust, dirt, and the rest of the environment the soldier exists in, what the hell difference does it really make? After a few rounds of fire-and-maneuver, you are basically dirt- and vegetation-colored anyway, so why not start with a decent base color like nutria or OD green, and let nature take its course. Filth degrades man-made camouflage like nobody’s business.
I’m not so sure that the Israelis and South Africans didn’t get it right, as did the US Army in WWII when it abandoned camouflage uniforms in Europe. These days, the whole bespoke camo pattern business is starting to morph over into heraldry, like so many clan tartans in the highlands of Scotland. And, with similar relevance to reality…
I give it a century, and the US Army equivalent of “dress blues” is going to be the “Traditional BDU in Woodland”, while the actual combat uniform will probably be some sort of mucked-up active camouflage system that doesn’t actually work all that well in the field… Think “Predator” with more outline contrast.
Meanwhile, the indigenous troublemakers we’ll probably still be fighting will still be wearing whatever civilian clothes make sense, so that they can blend into the local population at will. Active camouflage uniforms will probably cost the soldier a grand a pop, and will likely have the now-traditional Natick blown-out crotches…
Change your name to major bummer and go blaze away with your 1911.
Camo has been proven to be much more effective than plain colors it is not a debate.
The camo work of famed aviation artist Keith Ferris is instructive. For decades he has done contract work on camouflage patterns for military aircraft, and was influential in the grey patterns on most USAF and USN fighters, and the disruptive patterns on modern Russian fighters.
I may have missed it, but do aircraft generally go low-crawling through mud, covering up their oh-so-pretty camouflage paint patterns…?
My point, and it’s one that breezes by most people, is that whatever pattern you’ve got on your gear, after about the first dive into cover you make, it’s pretty much at one with the terrain. My experience has been that camouflage works great, under two conditions: One, you’re not moving, and two, you’re clean. Either of those goes away, and… Well, you might as well be wearing monotone, for all the good it does you.
I think a lot of folks have this weird idea that camouflage clothing is a must-have thing; having been around for the transition between OD green and Woodland, I’m far less certain of that “fact”. To be quite honest, while the woodland BDU sure seemed like an improvement, I’m not certain that it really was–Especially for mechanized warfare.
The whole question is highly arguable. On the one hand, concealment is sometimes just not that good an idea, particularly when you’re working with direct-fire fire support. Do you want to be blending into the terrain, for those occasions? Or, would you prefer to be easily made out against the background of what your fire support is aiming at?
The other issue to consider is that of IFF–Half the reason we want unique camouflage patterns is “branding” so that we can easily ID our own. Thus, MARPAT and MultiCam, and the various other unique patterns out there. There’s more than a few reasons the stuff is so popular, and goodly chunk boils down to sheer fashion and “coolness”. At which point, the question has to be asked: Is the juice worth the squeeze?
I have no problem with using unique patterns for ID or branding; let’s just quit pretending that it has any real utility once it starts getting used in the real world. One of the things you never see anyone testing or talking about at all with regards to this issue is how effective the patterns are, once degraded and/or dirty; if we were really serious about this BS, then that’s a key issue that would be getting tested. It’s not, so what does that tell you? Precisely none of the things everyone talks about being so great with these patterns are actually even visible, once you’ve gotten the damn things thoroughly muddied up or dusty; so what’s the point, again?
Given modern observation equipment, thermal scopes and the like, the whole point of any of this BS is rapidly becoming moot. It’s not going to be too long before those lovely IR dyes are what makes you stand out like a sore thumb, against vegetation, and then what? The technologic environment is constantly changing, with improved sensors and processing, so we can either keep chasing this idea down and spend billions, or we just acknowledge the fact that trying to obscure where we are and what we are doing is probably a wasted effort.
I mean, for the love of God, what the hell is the point of putting camouflage on a soldier who’s going to be in or standing next to a seventy-ton armored vehicle with a 1500hp turbine engine in it? Ya think that might just tend to draw some attention, there…? Snipers? Yeah, they might benefit from camouflage. Which is why we have ghillie suits. Average guy in the Army? It’s wasted ‘effing money.
The human eye is amazing in its ability to see and discern what doesn’t belong in a scene. Sensors of all types are pixelated and in thermal, limited in array size and resolution. Looking with the eye through high quality optics, is key during the day. Matching foreground and background colors is critical, but behavior and training is more important. Staying in shadows, moving slowly and in the terrain, not silouetting is what makes a good pattern work great. This subconscious stuff is marketing hype.
“what the hell is the point of putting camouflage on a soldier who’s going to be in or standing next to a seventy-ton armored vehicle”
I mean, you do know that most soldiers probably WON’T be standing next to such? For real, what kind of asinine question is this?
The point of camo is that, maybe, you won’t always be covered in dirt, mud, etc. all the time. Uniforms become dirty over time, but you won’t always have the luxury of needing to conceal yourself AFTER your uniform’s been covered in whatever environmental muck that happens to be laying about.
Why do you think nature can provide hundreds of examples of organisms that have camouflage?
Y’know… Insomnia is a bitch. I caught this post of yours while trying to bore myself back to sleep, and… Well… Here I am at the computer, because someone on the internet is being particularly dense and obtuse. Oh, and… Wrong.
I’m gonna guess that you don’t spend a lot of time out in nature, or the brilliant point you believed you were making about “hundreds of organisms that have camouflage” would have slapped you upside the head, the way it did me back when I was first starting to hunt. You might take note of the utter lack of “camouflage patterning” on most game animals–They are, instead, mostly monotone. No patterns, whatsoever–Deer, for a good example.
Also, the things that hunt them, here in North America, like cougars, wolves, and bears. Most prey animals actually eschew patterns, for a reason: They DON’T FUCKING WORK WHEN YOU ARE MOVING.
Ever notice that? What prey animals have coloration akin to camouflage patterns, again? Hmmm… Not too damn many, in North America.
Why is that? Well, for one fucking thing, we don’t have the tsetse fly, which is why the zebra has its stripes. The stripes confuse the flies, which is why they’re there–Not because it makes it easier for the zebra to avoid the lions.
You’ll also note that the limited number of predators with patterns have hunting patterns that include considerable amounts of stalking in terrain where those patterns make sense–Like, for example, tigers. Tigers happen to hunt a lot by stalking in the areas where there are boundaries between heavy vegetation and open terrain, and the light/shadow patterns in the boundary areas help make their stripes effective for them. If you’ve ever watched film of a tiger stalking something, you’ll note that they’re very careful to time their movements to match the natural rhythm of the moving light and shadow around them–Which is something I’ve never seen a human manage, oddly enough. Most of the time, in the military, we can’t actually do anything like that, anyway.
If you bother to stop and think about it for five seconds, you’ll start to grasp the point I was making–The near monotone and lack of pattern to the coloration of most animals has a reason, in that it’s a hell of a lot more effective than patterns for animals that move, which, again, tend to be something that you only see on animals that hunt primarily by stalking. Pursuit predators…? Monotone. Prey animals? Monotones.
Patterns and colors also tend to be on animals that use them for purposes other than concealment, or for those where there’s no real point to bothering with such things. Think the patterns on a peacock are there for camouflage…? Nope; look at the peahen, who’s trying to hide: Drab monotones. Lesson to be learned, there, my friend.
Jesus, dude… Have you never been deer hunting? Have you ever noticed how hard it is to make out those bastards, when they’re moving, even against terrain that’s not quite matching their coloration? That ain’t exactly accidental, either–Mother nature has tested camouflage across a wide variety of use-cases, and for the most part, she’s not been too keen on using patterns for camouflage. Most animals you have trouble spotting while moving are one color that may vary in shading from one aspect or another, but patterns? Nope; only animals that use that are ones that rely on staying still, or stalking. Very little that actually moves a lot uses patterns the way we try to use them for camouflage.
Good grief… When was the last time you saw an animal wandering around wearing anything looking like a damn woodland pattern, anyway? Ever wonder why?
Instead, what colors are most animals that have to worry about concealment? Mostly solid browns and tans that blend evenly across their bodies–Those work a charm, across wide varieties of backgrounds. The few deer that have patterns? Like fawns? They rely on staying still, to make use of those cute little dapples. Once they’re adult and moving around? Oddly enough, their color changes to a solid monotone. Huh. Think there might be, y’know… A reason for that?
Here’s another fun point to ponder: What animals are patterned, in the reptile world? Why, venomous snakes are, quite often. Why? Because they want to tell the world “HERE I AM–DON’T FUCK WITH ME”, and that’s why the goddamn diamondback rattlesnake has those nifty geometric patterns–They draw the eye, when they’re moving, don’t they? Snakes that want to hide…? Most of them are monotone colors that occur in nature. Ones that want to scare everything, like the coral snake…? Again, with patterns and bright colors.
SADF had the right idea with nutria, IMHO. I think we’d be smart to analyze why, and also ask why the hell we’ve gotten caught up in this freakin’ fashion show BS with all these different patterns that really don’t do a damn thing for us. You want to see how much utility camouflage is, vs. solid colors? Go take a look at a unit that’s on about day ten of an NTC rotation, and take a long, hard look at just how little difference there is between the ones in solid colors like the old-school fire-resistant tankers coveralls and the ones in camouflage. Hell, for that matter, take a long, hard look at the differences between the ones in something like woodland vs. desert, after they’ve been out in the desert a week or more. Hell, the only way you could spot some of the light guys was because the Tarantula OC team they had with them would be wearing bright, clean BDUs, fresh off a break in the cantonment area, and would stand out like sore thumbs. The rest of the players? Dirt-colored, mostly, and harder to spot when moving.
Whole other set of things to consider, with regards to this issue: Look at dog breeds: Which ones have we set out to breed with dappled coloration, and why?
Many breeds of bird dogs, you will note, are bred to have patterns. Why? Because they’re easier to make out when they’re moving, and thus, less likely to be shot.
Flock protection dogs, on the other hand…? We breed those to general monotone colors that will blend in better with the animals they’re protecting. Why? Because they’re harder to spot, that way, for predators.
These aren’t hard and fast rules, but they’re general enough that you can see clear outlines showing the real utility of these vaunted “patterns” you’re so enamored of.
Now, one thing I will grant–Deer and a lot of other species exhibit something that’s interesting, in that some examples show their coloration being made up of a bunch of different layers of color, such that some hairs are brown, black, tan, and whitish. Overall, you get out past close-up distance, they look an overall brown. This is a really effective coloration detail that I would not classify as pattern, but it is indicative of nature following another path, one that we’ve not managed to emulate with fabric.
What would be an interesting question is to ask if the different rods and cones in predator eyes pick up IR or UV light better, and whether or not that helps them distinguish prey from background. Further, has prey coloration and texturing of fur evolved to screw with that…? My guess is that were one to analyze just what the hell is going on with that multi-color blending into brown thing that many prey species have going would prove to show some interesting applications for actual effective camouflage for humans. Fur amounts to a bit of a natural ghillie suit, and the fact that it sheds dirt better than fabric does ain’t exactly accidental.
Overall, I’m going to continue to say that your point about nature using patterns isn’t particularly universal, nor is it pertinent to what we need to do with regards to concealing soldiers. Humans at war have far less in common with tigers, and a lot more in common with deer and mountain lions… Which do not make use of patterns at an observable level.
Although, I will grant that at the micro-scale, something akin to pattern might be argued to be going on with the varied coloration of individual deer hair. Whatever that is, though, it sure as hell isn’t something even remotely akin to woodland, MultiCam, or anything Pencott is doing.
So, the next combat uniform should be made of deer fur, I’d say.
It’s an issue I’ve wondered about, in all seriousness. What enables deer and other game animals to blend in so well with the terrain, under widely varied conditions?
Take a long, hard look at a deer hide, sometime–There’s layers and different colors of hair, all blending into a general brownish-tan at distance. Whether it is five yards or five hundred, what they have just works. And, it works while the furry little bastards are moving in the open across a scree slope up in the mountains, out in meadow through the dry dead grass of fall, or a bunch of other environments.
Their fur also sheds mud, dirt, and dust much more effectively than fabric does, maintaining their color and texture far more effectively than anything we issue.
And, there’s not a single man-made camouflage scheme that mimics what they’re doing, either. Kinda makes ya wonder, when you think about it… We keep trying to do “chameleon”, and maybe we ought to be doing “large ungulate brown”…
Have anyone seen Gulch camo?