When I was a kid in 1980`s South Africa I used to pour over books of cold war militaries and that camo pattern always intrigued me...fast forward to the mid 1990`s and i`m collecting uniforms from all over the world and was of the belief that Alpenflage was "Unobtanium" as far as availability on the surplus market...one day I was out and about in a small town called Alberton in the south of Johannesburg and went into a strip mall where there was an independently run clothing store, in there, along with all of the "Rave inspired" clothing was a full set, trousers, shirt, jacket and backpack, at a rediculously low price, I bought it all and it still graces my collection to this day... I often wonder just how the hell it got there...
That is crazy how a full suit of Alpenflage made it's way to S.A. Here in the US you can find it with a little poking around on the internet. It's my favorite pattern...
i recently purchased an essentially brand new south african battle vest. Its been considered Unobtanium here in Oklahoma for a long time. I cherish it dearly.
I went to a festival at Northern Germany in this jacket abt 25 years ago and was able to put a whole pallet (24 pcs) of 0,5ltr beer cans just into the pockets.
finally, somebody using the correct measurement for volume. congrats, close second! My old Glaw Gear smock takes 27 cans and the old BW poncho. very important for civis like me xD staying wet from the inside and dry from the outside. especially in northern Germany, on festivals...
fun fact from my days working at STANOC what detergent you wash your camo with has a huge effect on it's performance due to reflective additives that make you whites whiter than white.
I have seen that personally with BDUs. One single person standing out bright in the dark woods compared to everyone else blending in. At certain times it's amazing how much just laundry detergent can have that effect.
The Japanese also used magnetic anti-tank mines/grenades. In 1945 some captured Zimmeritt was sent to the Australians for trials. While it stopped the Type 99 mine sticking to their tanks, the paste didn’t set properly in the tropics. It was easily scrapped off when driving through brush and jungle.
I've got a pair of Alpenflage trousers for work, you can't beat them for durability and comfort. Since they're polycotton they can also be treated with greenland wax for weatherproofing, but left untreated they're very breathable and dry pretty quickly. The only thing that comes close is German army moleskin trousers. You can't beat Swiss Surplus gear. 👍
VSO did something similar with modern NVGs but also showing differences in typical civilian clothing between synthetic and natural fabrics. He also showed how modern laundry detergents often include brighteners that make fabric much more IR reflective than it otherwise would be. Some detergents marketed to hunters make sure not to include such as many animals see into the infrared spectrum.
that is the first time i see somebody whou finally knows something about this uniform. this is the only sIss army uniform i respect for your curiosity. the actual swiss army uniform is not nir compilant.... instead of progressing they just regressend further more the red adds adaptability to ambient luminosity thus rendering this camo suoer efficient for night and in every kind of shade variation, making him never too dark or too light. amd he works.wonderfully. really great video.
I hadn't thought about that reddish Swiss camo in a long time, but I used to see TONS of it in North America as surplus. Kinda remarkable when you think about how small of a country Switzerland is and how far away from us.
If you wash your camo with certain detergents, especially ones that are for whitening or bringing out the colors in your clothing, that will destroy the IR performance of your gear. So be careful washing your camo! S2 Underground has a good video on the subject.
ICI had at least 3 dyes which would turn cotton to the colour of a naturally occurring substance. Stone was one. The useful property was that this dyed material still reflected light like the naturally occurring substance in infrared light. They were 'vat dyes' which meant that they became water soluble when chemically reduced and so were able to infuse the cotton. When oxidised, air is enough, they became solid pigments within the cotton fibre. As some particles remained outside the fibre they had to be washed off. However, different types of fibre can be a different colour when dyed with the same dye. Wool and Nylon can be treated with the same dye and come out different colours, for example.
I know a guy who was in the US Army that told me they discovered that laundry starch made uniforms glow under IR, so they put out a reg to stop using it. Officers gonna officer, though, so eventually they had to issue uniforms that couldn't be starched. And that's why I always say "an army marches on the crispness of its pleats."
Soap flakes left in the open room changed slightly. After a week of so in a warm moist room the top layer became able to make cotton glow purple in Ultraviolet light after being boiled with soap and water and cotton. Cotton, whether grey or boiled is in water, did not glow. If boiled in soap fresh out of a sack it did not glow. It only seemed to be boiling in soap which had exposure which caused the glow in UV. This was especially bright in bleached cotton, dyed or not. The supplier of soap could not explain it.
When BDUs came out army said no starch to an army used to starch uniforms So units required you to starch your BDUs and command never heard of the army ban on it
I used to buy a special laundry detergent for my camouflage hunting clothes after spooking deer in the woods. Once I began using the proper detergent, I didn’t have that problem anymore.
I remember a strong emphasis in my short time as a British reserve in commando training on using the pockets on our uniform, in the field they where stuffed, few magazines in the smock zip pocket and the staff where good for a few fire and maneuver demos. Apparently there was some link to the falklands veterans.
This was excellent. Next you could take a few out into the field to see if the contrast patterns actually blend with the background or break up the human form. I talked to a guy who did disaster relief and he said the easiest people to spot from a helicopter were wearing the same thing all over, no matter the colour/pattern, unless it was a very good match to their background. The brain picks out the human form so a contrasting patterned human form will stand out against a differently contrasting background. He said it was easy to spot military and police in a hurricane smashed city but civilian rescue in bright block colours of their vest, trousers jacket and hat would blend in if it all contrasted.
Yup. We sewed up some coveralls out of random plain fabrics to test what harlequin patterns would do. Looked utterly ridiculous in a camp setting, disappeared in an urban environment.
@@Matt_The_Hugenot Was it a harlequin of different camo? I was thinking chunks of contrasting camo patterns that all were a decent fit for the background would also break up the human form better than one uniform pattern.
not fully on topic, but I have been wearing the standard issue leather belt that held up the Taz83 trousers for 35 years (daily for at least 10h) and it is still in good order (worn of course) best piece of craftsmanship I ever owned
The DPM smock in question was the SASS Kit Carry Smock. It literally just had extra lower pockets repeated across the back of the tail of the smock. The same company "SASS" produced a smock manufactured from cordura nylon called the "Squaddie Smock". The only thing the kit carry smock excelled at was recce patrols at night when you needed to dump your fighting order but still carry some mags and kendal mint cake. 6:01
I still got my 'carry everything in your pockets' smock from the days of me being a squaddie its an early Kit Carry Smock by 'special Air Sea Services, its still in good nick almost almost 30 years on..
@@BlokeontheRange The only other things that i can find about Blue camo is the middle east, kurdisch and what you already talked about the Palestinian forces.
I have a complete set including a small pack. Love the colors. The Russian WW2 ameba camouflage is also another interesting pattern. It’s surprisingly effective.
That was an interesting subject, Mike. Very Kool, even. A subject you could really go into the weeds on, as well! You could go on and on with this, testing day and night in the woods, naked eye, modern "star-lite" NVDs, etc.... great fun, thank you!
Thanks for the video. I'd never thought of that issue. This video is very interesting. I like the look of that old Swiss camouflage. If they had made any large enough for me, I might have bought some on the surplus websites back when I had more disposable income.
Another well done and informative video. Thank you. Although, you steadily ruining all my fantasies. I’ve always imagined Swiss meadows were full of red wild flowers.
Nice timing, I finally managed to get some good TAZ83 webbing and was able to sew up a ZULU style watch strap. Wearing it on my Citizen JP2007-17w atm and it looks great, TAZ83 makes a great casual camo. I tried for years to find NATO/ZULU straps in real camo patterns (other than multicam), I was inspired by a Doxa special edition where they included a alpenflage strap as a sort of homage. They weren’t offering replacements and I’m certain they would’ve been too expensive if they had. With the hardware I’m only a few dollars into each strap. I hand sewed the first one and did the rest on a machine, some nylon thread and a needle is really all you need.
I’m not sure why my reply isn’t visible… I got the webbing from an Indonesian company called ‘Varja Concepts’, they offer essentially any pattern you can think of.
Ever since i learned more about the old TAZ 57, it made me realise how bad our infantry kit was. Only with the TAZ 90 and the GTE did we finally create a sane load bearing rig.
Did you use the term REMF" at the beginning??? Havent heard that term in YEARS!!!! In the US Army, back when we were issued God's Plaid (the M81 woodland pattern), we were instructed to only use a certain powdered detergent, to minimize ruining the IR reflectivity of the uniform. I dont think any of us actually followed that recommendation. That, and the crazy idea of starching uniforms while in garrison (I was an infantryman, and I was NOT a garrison soldier, I much preferred the field!), pretty much killed any IR properties of those uniforms. Of course, over time, you ended up acquiring field uniforms, and garrison uniforms-but the field ones were usually faded garrison ones that were no longer really serviceable.
3:25 Btw that "no longer traveling Christmas Tree" thing means the older WW2 age Uniform was so uncomfortable to wear that it feels like you put a spikee Christmas tree in your Trousers. The Old Men in Switzerland call it still "Tannige Hose" -> pine trousers Fun Fact
TY Bloke. I like your content, but not so much the Swiss "Alpenflage" since I live in a coastal rainforest area, red is simply no where around. Red during daylight would be a death sentence to troops, in terms of you will be seen. First camo luv was DPM, then Flecktarn , which works well, and had a rare-ish Canadian Airborne DPM smock, with a reduced size pattern . Good job-TY, any camo is good , if it works in your Op. zone. * The cut, and utility of the Swiss jacket is likely best in class for carrying stuff without a pack...I already knew why the red. TY.
Fall in Alaska's tundra, the camo is excellent for hunting. Plenty of reds and orange flora. I would put Rhodesia brush stroke camo at the top of the list for looks.
As a point of questioning, when you talk about early night vision is it not more properly called "Gen 0" rather than "Gen 1"? I was under the impression that war time night vision makes use of pure image converters without any intensification, this being Gen 0. Simply converting IR light into visible light. Then in the mid cold war, microchannel plates were introduced which allowed for true "intensification" leading to Gen 1. Both still requiring additional IR light sources simply due to the tubes not being advanced enough yet.
I've also seen the WW2 era active IR systems referred to as "Gen 0" in modern sources. I think that is from the viewpoint of Gen 1 thermal imagers being the first passive infrared systems. But those early active IR systems might also be counted as first generation night vision systems. In the terms that I am used to "image intensifiers" work with the visible spectrum as distinct from the far infrared. However the first British image intensifier sight for the SLR clearly also worked in the near IR and came with an optional IR search light.
Very interesting! Having Gen2+ analogue NVD I think the dull washed out effect would be most desired. In the deep dark woods there is a lot of noise and anything with contrast will stand out.
I have loads of alpenflage jackets, shirts and trousers. The jackets, with pouches on the back and it's clip in rucksack is phenomenal. I have a few sniper jackets as well. The face veils integrated into the hood was a good design. The 83 was a poorer design imho.
I was left with the impression that this sort of high contrast, disruptive pattern would only work when the soldier using it is standing still. At the moment any sort of human movement gets into place, it might well turn to be a problem and call the attention. Because in combat, in many aspects, you don't simply indenfy the form alone, but rather the movement alongside it. You "realize" the movement, let's say, of a target is doing. That heavy glow little spot, no matter how small it can be, would make the pattern of human movement more obvious. But I never tested those things in practice under combat to actually have any corroboration, so my opinion isn't worth much. However, I'm an impressionist painter still. I have used myself to see things all blurred. And sometimes you can tell what is something by the way it moves or waves.
Maybe a silly question: was it necessary to turn off the light for this infrared viewer? Since it's just 'translating ' infrared light, wouldn't it work under daylight or normal lamp light (which also contain IR light) just as well? It would've saved you some trouble... O...never mind. Should have watched to the end before asking 😂
In those parts there are Oak forests. Leaves stay on most of the autum even winter. They turn near red in color in the end. Thats why camo has red part, in Germany as well. Hard to belive that germans expected IR equipment on mass in WW2
@@tomhenry897 We had it, but the British RG systems never reached production and the US systems were deployed in the Pacific, but perhaps not in Europe?
I watched some old Swiss army vids and they love rifle grenades and der panzerfaust. Also listening to the French on here sounds indiscernible from France French...for me at least.
Carrying all your kit in your jacket sounds like one of those 'clever' ideas thought up with by someone with either little practical experience or trying too hard to cut costs. It's best application could be for budget airline passengers not willing to pay extra for baggage.
I think it might make more sense for a milicia army like the swiss then any standing army. Swiss take their service stuff home, anyone who had the pleasure of dragging home all your stuff with public transport might understand the appeal of the integrated storage.
I love my alpenflage parka but the hood is massive and I mean massive haha. Not sure if that’s for a helmet or what but it even seems a bit large for that. It is a very heavy jacket probably weighing more than 5 pounds but it is very high quality. Now I need some pants 😂 Great video
@@BlokeontheRange yeah the only helmet I have is an old green steel helmet with a hard plastic Kevlar looking liner in it with a pretty minimal brim. Thank you for the response
when the sun sets in the sea. white is almost imposible to see. black on the other hand. it realy stand out. It was the total oposit what my father thought and he is from the coast.
Meanwhile orangutans are happy being orange. At least until someone cuts down their trees! One explanation for this is that the after image on some predator species after looking at bright green sunlit leaves is orange. Some other arboreal species are also orange, red squirrels for example.
I've wondered about the RAAF & RAN wearing blue and grey camouflage, respectively. If you're ground personnel, blue camouflage is a bit pointless. Unless you'r an aircraft, like Spitfires with the blue undersides. And the RAN? The only thing grey are the ships, and why would you want to camouflage yourself on your ship? To hide from the Petty Officers? 😅 I think it's a "fashion" thing that somebody thought up.
@thhseeking yeah, for the RAN, and RAAF it's more just so that we all have similar uniforms and look like a joint/ integrated force. Plus, I think the cams look much better than the older grey uniform for the RAN
Switzerland should have followed the absolute CHAD of camouflage and used _Ein Strich-kein Strich_ rather than that weird rubberised abomination. Also the Quality of TaZ90 varies so much no soldier of our company ended up with matching fatigues, and let's not even mention the gore-tex.
Brushstroke or lizard would be the coolest pattern in my opinion. The fade resistance also varies a lot with the TAZ90. The newer fabric with the small writings on it would already fade after a couple of washings. And the seams are not strong enough, especially on the trousers.
@@Tony.795 Hell yeah, I'm all for Lizard. Brushstroke is cool but way too african to defend the local pinewoods. God they are the worst, they fade at different speeds which means you end up with trousers in pinks and beiges with a tint of olive while the jacket still hangs on to the greens and browns although an August WK was enough to let bleach and it catch up.
My take away is that for night ops, if you think the opposition is using active IR, don't wear pure black. You stick out in the reflective background. Now what about camo face paint?
non-trivial pattern development... the digital patterns have the advantage in having a wide range of perceptible 'patterns', really, more disruptive, without being a 'pixelated' look...I've seen an urban pattern development that uses fairly 'regular' patterns, as you see more rectangular and sharp-edged terrain in urban spaces, and it gas gradients, on some blocks, that reminds one of shadows....
suis que a la moitie mais dejas je me marre :) j etais fusiller de forteresse avec la tenue de camouflage que tu a , et tireur d elite avec le fass 57 avec lunette 77 et la vison de nuit ! alors si y a du rouge sur les taz c est pour les feuilles mortes au sol ! rien a voir avec l infrarouge qui etais une grosse daube ! ce deplacer avec ca sur le fusil plus une enrorme batterie sur le cote ! super facile de ce depalcer sans bruit !
i know this is a silly thing to care about, but the fact the vast majority of armies are phasing out unique camo patterns for multicam and multicam copies is really sad.
See in Ukraine, where a lot of units have had to resort to brightly-coloured tape on uniforms in order to identify who's on which side. Differing patterns used to serve that role very well.
That's what happens when something works *really* well. And MultiCam does work extremely well in most environments. It will be interesting to see, in maybe a decade or so, if some militaries decide it works *too* well because of the difficulty identifying what unit is who and go back to patterns that are more unique, even if they're less effective as camo.
@@DerekIcelord Some of the washed out British MTP looks as bad as UCP though, it's almost a kinda mottled ivory colour and just glows. Looks awesome when fresh and richly-coloured though!
UCP isn't just useful in grey mountains. It's also fairly good in bombed out urban environments. But for a supposedly universal pattern 2 out of ♾️ is pretty bad 😂
I'm a sorta semi-pro photographer, and when I look at UCP I just think "Whoever designed this didn't calibrate his monitor" - smacks of someone having to too much orange on his monitor that I'd swear they shot it with a Tungsten white balance.
First time I saw UCP was at Texas Motor Speedway and a sort of urban situation and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Made worse by the crowds and signage, but even out in an open area it was too easy to spot. Then they went with PJ material so the two environs it sort of worked best at wore it out nearly instantly. Modern version of our first camo pattern sent to the Pacific Theater that bleached near white in the field.
@@jpkalishek4586 I honestly have no idea how it got far enough to be accepted. There's not - believe it or not - a lot of blue in nature, save the sky or tropical beach water. There's nothing that's really tinted blue like UCP was, at least not in the vast majority of natural environments. Maybe a slate quarry? It's like the whole pattern was made, then had a blue wash put over it. Sure, you don't expect a camo colour to 100% match to 100% of environments, but it should at least fool your brain into think it's believable the colours are there. I remember seeing that photo of a US soldier giving instructions to a guy in a ghillie suit in a forest, and hoo boy, it was bad. Almost looked like someone had just photoshopped the US soldier in to the picture, and rather poorly.
Since you mentioned the new Dutch camo Mike, I have a bit of a rant on that... I'm part of a group of (younger) veterans that love playing Airsoft, and during an outting in Austria, about half the team (we're divided into two "squads") decided to field the new Dutch NFP, the rest of us opting for good old fashioned GVT Woodland, since it can be sourced a LOT cheaper, especially when it's a whole team's worth of gear. Now, I don't know what it is with the NFP uniforms, but in the (partially) wooded area where we played our game, our boys stuck out like a fly on a white tabletcloth for some reason. It just didn't work worth a damn unless the boys were staying absolutely still, any movement and they would get spotted instantly. At one point, I was moving along in front of one of the NFP wearers, NFP boy gets hit, I am seemingly unnoticed so I hit both the "enemies" with returned fire, and when asked about whether they actually saw us or fired at movement, they said, and I paraphrase; "that new pattern doesn't blend in with the leaves when you move, it instantly looks like there's an 8-bit game character moving through the brush, sticks out like a (rather crude Flemish phrase for non-white person in crowd of whites)". I'm not sure if it was the particular uniforms (though they all came from Seyntex, which makes the new uniforms for both the Dutch and the Belgian armies), or if the greenery in that particular location just clashed with the pattern, but we lost (Royally) to our Belgian opponents, who's multicam just worked far better...
If in austria, maybe try the old austrian Kaz75 (partially available at Varusteleka relatively cheap). (or even the Kaz03 stuff) Maybe doesn't look like much because unicoloured, but from what i remember during my service time almost 25 years ago, it was surprisingly effective.
From a quick glance at the pattern on Camopedia, it seems to me that the NFP has a problem of micro/macro patterns. A good camo should create blobs/pixels of various colors at various ranges, but without creating a repetitive pattern. For example, an area could have 3 pixels of various shades of green and 1 brown pixel, which would be perceived by the enemy as 4 distinct colors at close range, but at say a medium range of 100m, the 4 pixels would fuse into a single greenish pixel. About the NFP, from a few to maybe a few tens of meters, it looks to me that the pattern is basically a gray/brown background with green pixels on top that are spread out at relatively constant intervals, hence the 8-bit game character comment. From a further distance, there's the risk that all the colors get mixed into a single blob, and at that point, you'd get an isoluminance problem, where the whole uniform shines uniformly without contrast. This was particularly visible with UCP, and I'd suggest googling Hyperstealth to read more on all the various considerations that get into designing a camo pattern. About the new Swiss camo pattern, the Multiumfeld-Tarnmuster 16, what's baffling is that it's a further evolution of the TAZ 57. It's basically the same pattern with minor shape adjustments and 4 colors derived from Multicam in flat blobs. This means it doesn't come close to the 7 colors used in Multicam, which btw also often have gradients when moving from one blob to another. Multicam, as well as other digital patterns such as the U.S. Navy's AOR 2, have shown how micro/macro patterns matter, so one would think the Swiss army would have been taking notes about foreign developments over the past 2-3 decades. It's also not very flattering (though PPP changes the picture) that Switzerland has been spending massively more on defense than Ukraine till about 2020-2022, but that the latter managed to create several patterns since its independence, including some that incorporate some three-dimensional elements to fool the eyes' perception of depth such as Predator or Varan, and to a lesser degree, MaWka.
IDK for sure if related or not - the pattern used by the US Marines in the pacific in WW2 did the same thing. Great when standing still - bad when moving.
Also, red is the complementary color to green - if You step 3 metres back, You'll see how these 2 most contrasting colors blend together - just like in an impressionist/pointilistic painting, yet reflecting different greens and browns in the surroundings. That's why TAZ 57 is so extremely effective
True, also any green that blends in has red in it. Mixing just blue and yellow dye makes a trash can/street sign green that doesn't blend In with the many shades of green found in nature. Od green has a little red in it, to make it browner than normal green. I can see why they use red, even though at a distance it might as well be brown, which brown itself is sorta a red with extra steps. In the temperate forests in the fall, leaves turn red sometimes, before they turn brown.
Q) oi quarter master why so small ? A) it should fit someone from middle earth ----- BUT I'm not from middle earth, I'm from middle England, sad-face-emoji
The reason the 1990 pattern osnt optimized to provide high contrast under IR illumination is that, by 1990, no credible threat to Switzerland would be *using* active IR (certainly) not to scope out infantrymen), because *everyone* whonwas fieldinf night vision in any kind of numbers was using passive IR (where this camouflage technique doesn't work as well), image intensification (where it doesn't work at all), and thermals were coming online (where this technique also doesn't work at all). In fact, by the end of the Cold War, ComBloc platoon DMR and antitank weapon scopes were being fielded that had the passive receiver capability of the 1st Gen active IR but no illuminator, because they weren't intended to function as night sights, per se (their detectors were too poor to funtrion as stand alone passive IR sights). They were there to spot those 1st Gen IR illuminators by the beams, so the forces using 1st Gen IR could be targeted, almost as if theybwere running about with white light flashlights and searchlights turned on. Remember, unless you are *actively projecting* IR light, the IR reflectivity of the target is irrelevant. So, if you aren't really concerned with active IR threats, there is literally no point in using a countermeasure that *only* works against a threat you aren't facing.
This also goes a long way to explain why many early and early-derived camouflage patterns work well under active IR but suck massively under passive (American ERDL and Woodland come to mind immediately)
I suspect that one of the real issues with uniform is that unless it is cut and fitted correctly, so that all the weight rests on the shoulders it probably going to put a lot of very unpleasant pressure on the back of the neck.
Indeed one of the main complaints was poor balancing, especially once ammo magazines started being emptied, food eaten, and so on. It was very much a classic example of seeking so hard to eliminate the worst problems of the old system that you forget what the old system did right, leading to the new system having all the problems "solved" by the old system, creating a vicious cycle as you then have to "solve" the problems of the new system by using elements of the old system!
You actually don't want all of the weight on the shoulders. You'd want a good bit of the weight to rest on the hips as well. This is why both military and civilian hiking backpacks are designed the way they are with a padded waist belt and a frame that goes down to and rests on the small of the back around the top of your pelvis.
Oh gosh finally someone gets it, the ACU felt like a thin cord hanging on the back of my neck, it sucked. Worst part of the uniform, the rest was okay, but that tiny paper thin neck collar was like a sharp edge.
Love alpenflage for running paintballs and ratting cos of the pockets. My 1st jacket was about £13 a few years ago. Now on ebay they're £30+. Have about four complete uniforms so maybe I'll be able to retire early haha.
I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but the "Swampy" pattern helmet cover that you test around 21:00 were actually hand-painted, repurposed from the old Shako covers which were in the salt-and-pepper material. Only the single-sided helmet covers were done this way; AFAIK, the reversible ones predated or were contemporaneous with the oversuit trials. Sadly, I don't remember where I read this information, but I do remember it was at least partly from original sources.
I was lucky that we were testing the TAZ83 only problem that we were also testing the new heavy ABC gear. I found it funny that the tent stuff was Zelteinheit 01, 1901 not 2001!
![State of Play | September 24, 2024 [ENGLISH]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/fVs0suPHAX8/mqdefault.jpg)
When I was a kid in 1980`s South Africa I used to pour over books of cold war militaries and that camo pattern always intrigued me...fast forward to the mid 1990`s and i`m collecting uniforms from all over the world and was of the belief that Alpenflage was "Unobtanium" as far as availability on the surplus market...one day I was out and about in a small town called Alberton in the south of Johannesburg and went into a strip mall where there was an independently run clothing store, in there, along with all of the "Rave inspired" clothing was a full set, trousers, shirt, jacket and backpack, at a rediculously low price, I bought it all and it still graces my collection to this day...
I often wonder just how the hell it got there...
That is crazy how a full suit of Alpenflage made it's way to S.A. Here in the US you can find it with a little poking around on the internet. It's my favorite pattern...
well the alps (Austria) and Holland (dutch) not so far apart - but to SA - prolly a brazilin boy or paper clip nozi 😵💫
i recently purchased an essentially brand new south african battle vest. Its been considered Unobtanium here in Oklahoma for a long time. I cherish it dearly.
@@BlackIronGamerPattern 84?
@@skitkorvboogiepattern 83
I went to a festival at Northern Germany in this jacket abt 25 years ago and was able to put a whole pallet (24 pcs) of 0,5ltr beer cans just into the pockets.
finally, somebody using the correct measurement for volume. congrats, close second! My old Glaw Gear smock takes 27 cans and the old BW poncho. very important for civis like me xD staying wet from the inside and dry from the outside. especially in northern Germany, on festivals...
Wacken?
@@Schulzffw Super-Crash Open Air
We used to call the pattern the “Vier-Frucht-Pyjama” 😊
The Blue DPM was used during the Iraq invasion to differentiate from Iraqis who also used DPM.
@@ericferguson9989 i am English - by (DPM) you ment to say damp permeable material ?
as worn with the detachable molded souled boot (DMS) ????????????
@@HNH421 Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM) is the commonly used name of a camouflage pattern used by the British Armed Forces.
tutti frutti pajamas?
fun fact from my days working at STANOC what detergent you wash your camo with has a huge effect on it's performance due to reflective additives that make you whites whiter than white.
I have seen that personally with BDUs. One single person standing out bright in the dark woods compared to everyone else blending in.
At certain times it's amazing how much just laundry detergent can have that effect.
I thought most optical whiteners in detergents were designed to glow in UV rather than IR
whites whiter than white - wow !!!! so that is why the shortest shorts are Rhodesian it is not their legs ,, its the detergent 😄
Yup. I got pissed when my mom washed some of my camo that I had left at her house. 😅
The Japanese also used magnetic anti-tank mines/grenades.
In 1945 some captured Zimmeritt was sent to the Australians for trials. While it stopped the Type 99 mine sticking to their tanks, the paste didn’t set properly in the tropics. It was easily scrapped off when driving through brush and jungle.
I've got a pair of Alpenflage trousers for work, you can't beat them for durability and comfort. Since they're polycotton they can also be treated with greenland wax for weatherproofing, but left untreated they're very breathable and dry pretty quickly.
The only thing that comes close is German army moleskin trousers. You can't beat Swiss Surplus gear. 👍
VSO did something similar with modern NVGs but also showing differences in typical civilian clothing between synthetic and natural fabrics. He also showed how modern laundry detergents often include brighteners that make fabric much more IR reflective than it otherwise would be. Some detergents marketed to hunters make sure not to include such as many animals see into the infrared spectrum.
czech strichtarn is the best camo I've seen under ir light the double layered camo really looks amazing with night vision
that is the first time i see somebody whou finally knows something about this uniform.
this is the only sIss army uniform i respect
for your curiosity. the actual swiss army uniform is not nir compilant....
instead of progressing they just regressend
further more the red adds adaptability to ambient luminosity thus rendering this camo suoer efficient for night and in every kind of shade variation, making him never too dark or too light.
amd he works.wonderfully.
really great video.
I hadn't thought about that reddish Swiss camo in a long time, but I used to see TONS of it in North America as surplus. Kinda remarkable when you think about how small of a country Switzerland is and how far away from us.
If you wash your camo with certain detergents, especially ones that are for whitening or bringing out the colors in your clothing, that will destroy the IR performance of your gear. So be careful washing your camo! S2 Underground has a good video on the subject.
ICI had at least 3 dyes which would turn cotton to the colour of a naturally occurring substance. Stone was one.
The useful property was that this dyed material still reflected light like the naturally occurring substance in infrared light.
They were 'vat dyes' which meant that they became water soluble when chemically reduced and so were able to infuse the cotton. When oxidised, air is enough, they became solid pigments within the cotton fibre.
As some particles remained outside the fibre they had to be washed off.
However, different types of fibre can be a different colour when dyed with the same dye. Wool and Nylon can be treated with the same dye and come out different colours, for example.
I know a guy who was in the US Army that told me they discovered that laundry starch made uniforms glow under IR, so they put out a reg to stop using it. Officers gonna officer, though, so eventually they had to issue uniforms that couldn't be starched.
And that's why I always say "an army marches on the crispness of its pleats."
Soap flakes left in the open room changed slightly. After a week of so in a warm moist room the top layer became able to make cotton glow purple in Ultraviolet light after being boiled with soap and water and cotton.
Cotton, whether grey or boiled is in water, did not glow. If boiled in soap fresh out of a sack it did not glow.
It only seemed to be boiling in soap which had exposure which caused the glow in UV. This was especially bright in bleached cotton, dyed or not.
The supplier of soap could not explain it.
When BDUs came out army said no starch to an army used to starch uniforms
So units required you to starch your BDUs and command never heard of the army ban on it
I used to buy a special laundry detergent for my camouflage hunting clothes after spooking deer in the woods. Once I began using the proper detergent, I didn’t have that problem anymore.
I remember a strong emphasis in my short time as a British reserve in commando training on using the pockets on our uniform, in the field they where stuffed, few magazines in the smock zip pocket and the staff where good for a few fire and maneuver demos. Apparently there was some link to the falklands veterans.
Alpenflage has always been my favourite camo, it's also great for the autumn where I live.
That jacket is pretty cool, reminds me of myself in highschool with my surplus US jacket; snacks, pens and pencils, beverages, cd player, gameboy...
This was excellent. Next you could take a few out into the field to see if the contrast patterns actually blend with the background or break up the human form.
I talked to a guy who did disaster relief and he said the easiest people to spot from a helicopter were wearing the same thing all over, no matter the colour/pattern, unless it was a very good match to their background. The brain picks out the human form so a contrasting patterned human form will stand out against a differently contrasting background. He said it was easy to spot military and police in a hurricane smashed city but civilian rescue in bright block colours of their vest, trousers jacket and hat would blend in if it all contrasted.
Yup. We sewed up some coveralls out of random plain fabrics to test what harlequin patterns would do. Looked utterly ridiculous in a camp setting, disappeared in an urban environment.
@@Matt_The_Hugenot Was it a harlequin of different camo? I was thinking chunks of contrasting camo patterns that all were a decent fit for the background would also break up the human form better than one uniform pattern.
@@YerluvinunclePete No just regular plain fabric.
Always find your presentations informative and you cover topics and angles others ignore, well done
Thanks for your kind words :)
not fully on topic, but I have been wearing the standard issue leather belt that held up the Taz83 trousers for 35 years (daily for at least 10h) and it is still in good order (worn of course) best piece of craftsmanship I ever owned
The DPM smock in question was the SASS Kit Carry Smock. It literally just had extra lower pockets repeated across the back of the tail of the smock. The same company "SASS" produced a smock manufactured from cordura nylon called the "Squaddie Smock". The only thing the kit carry smock excelled at was recce patrols at night when you needed to dump your fighting order but still carry some mags and kendal mint cake. 6:01
SASSKIT gear was great.
Really interesting. I hope we'll see a follow-up outside at some distance.
I still got my 'carry everything in your pockets' smock from the days of me being a squaddie its an early Kit Carry Smock by 'special Air Sea Services, its still in good nick almost almost 30 years on..
I found an article on Joint forces website about the Blue DPM 68 Pattern, it seems to be used for UK OPFOR Opposing Forces.
My 68 patt smock massively predates the use of blue PCS clothing for OPFOR, which dates to after the adoption of MTP.
@@BlokeontheRange The only other things that i can find about Blue camo is the middle east, kurdisch and what you already talked about the Palestinian forces.
@@postboer66Iraqi Police wore a Blue colored digicamo too I believe.
I have a complete set including a small pack. Love the colors. The Russian WW2 ameba camouflage is also another interesting pattern. It’s surprisingly effective.
Great video, ive always preferred the old pattern camo. Rhodesian brush stroke and ww2 Palmenmuster. Belgian post war Moon and ball.
That was an interesting subject, Mike. Very Kool, even. A subject you could really go into the weeds on, as well! You could go on and on with this, testing day and night in the woods, naked eye, modern "star-lite" NVDs, etc.... great fun, thank you!
Great explanation on Swiss red colour Alpenflage.
Very interesting info about the performance with night vision! I will have to test out my own fruit pajamas next time I have the nods out
Thanks for the video.
I'd never thought of that issue. This video is very interesting. I like the look of that old Swiss camouflage. If they had made any large enough for me, I might have bought some on the surplus websites back when I had more disposable income.
Another well done and informative video. Thank you. Although, you steadily ruining all my fantasies. I’ve always imagined Swiss meadows were full of red wild flowers.
I refer to my alpinflage outfit as "formalflage". I wear it to all family events. They think I'm bonkers. I'm ok with that.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Better that your family thinks you're a goof than to have expectations. Speaking from personal experience.
Nice timing, I finally managed to get some good TAZ83 webbing and was able to sew up a ZULU style watch strap. Wearing it on my Citizen JP2007-17w atm and it looks great, TAZ83 makes a great casual camo.
I tried for years to find NATO/ZULU straps in real camo patterns (other than multicam), I was inspired by a Doxa special edition where they included a alpenflage strap as a sort of homage. They weren’t offering replacements and I’m certain they would’ve been too expensive if they had. With the hardware I’m only a few dollars into each strap. I hand sewed the first one and did the rest on a machine, some nylon thread and a needle is really all you need.
I’m not sure why my reply isn’t visible…
I got the webbing from an Indonesian company called ‘Varja Concepts’, they offer essentially any pattern you can think of.
If it had a link in it, YT will have deep-holed it...
Very interesting for us military nerds, Semper Fi!
Ever since i learned more about the old TAZ 57, it made me realise how bad our infantry kit was. Only with the TAZ 90 and the GTE did we finally create a sane load bearing rig.
Did you use the term REMF" at the beginning??? Havent heard that term in YEARS!!!!
In the US Army, back when we were issued God's Plaid (the M81 woodland pattern), we were instructed to only use a certain powdered detergent, to minimize ruining the IR reflectivity of the uniform. I dont think any of us actually followed that recommendation. That, and the crazy idea of starching uniforms while in garrison (I was an infantryman, and I was NOT a garrison soldier, I much preferred the field!), pretty much killed any IR properties of those uniforms. Of course, over time, you ended up acquiring field uniforms, and garrison uniforms-but the field ones were usually faded garrison ones that were no longer really serviceable.
Same in Sweden, m90 isnt copyrighted and there has been russian made camoe found on the market. M/59 is still special, looks nice.
I picked up one of these jackets in a surplus store in the 90's I loved that jacket.
3:25 Btw that "no longer traveling Christmas Tree" thing means the older WW2 age Uniform was so uncomfortable to wear that it feels like you put a spikee Christmas tree in your Trousers. The Old Men in Switzerland call it still "Tannige Hose" -> pine trousers
Fun Fact
I expect that was because they had forgotten their rayon under-trousers. They go down below the knee and also make your ordinary trousers look neater.
TY Bloke. I like your content, but not so much the Swiss "Alpenflage" since I live in a coastal rainforest area, red is simply no where around. Red during daylight would be a death sentence to troops, in terms of you will be seen. First camo luv was DPM, then Flecktarn , which works well, and had a rare-ish Canadian Airborne DPM smock, with a reduced size pattern . Good job-TY, any camo is good , if it works in your Op. zone.
* The cut, and utility of the Swiss jacket is likely best in class for carrying stuff without a pack...I already knew why the red. TY.
Fall in Alaska's tundra, the camo is excellent for hunting. Plenty of reds and orange flora. I would put Rhodesia brush stroke camo at the top of the list for looks.
As a point of questioning, when you talk about early night vision is it not more properly called "Gen 0" rather than "Gen 1"?
I was under the impression that war time night vision makes use of pure image converters without any intensification, this being Gen 0. Simply converting IR light into visible light.
Then in the mid cold war, microchannel plates were introduced which allowed for true "intensification" leading to Gen 1. Both still requiring additional IR light sources simply due to the tubes not being advanced enough yet.
Actually that level of detail is beyond me!
I've also seen the WW2 era active IR systems referred to as "Gen 0" in modern sources. I think that is from the viewpoint of Gen 1 thermal imagers being the first passive infrared systems. But those early active IR systems might also be counted as first generation night vision systems.
In the terms that I am used to "image intensifiers" work with the visible spectrum as distinct from the far infrared. However the first British image intensifier sight for the SLR clearly also worked in the near IR and came with an optional IR search light.
Kit-Carry smocks were a thing in the 90’s with the Brit’s, DPM of course from SASS ….
Indeed, as I mentioned :)
As a Swiss I can tell you ladies love Alpenflage 😂😏
Great breakdown! I would love to see these setup at various distances from one to three hundred meters, especially with some vegetation in the mix.
Very interesting! Having Gen2+ analogue NVD I think the dull washed out effect would be most desired. In the deep dark woods there is a lot of noise and anything with contrast will stand out.
Awesome video!
I have loads of alpenflage jackets, shirts and trousers. The jackets, with pouches on the back and it's clip in rucksack is phenomenal.
I have a few sniper jackets as well. The face veils integrated into the hood was a good design.
The 83 was a poorer design imho.
83 was a working uniform not a combat uniform, hence the difference in design.
Should have bought a set when cheap and available
I had that uniform when i played paintball i the early 90's. It didn't quite fit in , in the Swedish pine/spruce woods 🤣
Give it a whirl in some birch woodland in the Autumn, you become a ghost.
Very interesting, only tested swedish M90 and US M81 woodland.
I was left with the impression that this sort of high contrast, disruptive pattern would only work when the soldier using it is standing still. At the moment any sort of human movement gets into place, it might well turn to be a problem and call the attention. Because in combat, in many aspects, you don't simply indenfy the form alone, but rather the movement alongside it. You "realize" the movement, let's say, of a target is doing. That heavy glow little spot, no matter how small it can be, would make the pattern of human movement more obvious.
But I never tested those things in practice under combat to actually have any corroboration, so my opinion isn't worth much. However, I'm an impressionist painter still. I have used myself to see things all blurred. And sometimes you can tell what is something by the way it moves or waves.
Did you call tank crews ' REMFs', In my minds eye I can see hundreds of tank crewman looking for someone to hold their beer!
i'd love to this this done outside, at night, and maybe on a chappie or a mannequin to see how the camos look at a distance
That training film had some extremely British-Imperial music going on. Weird!
Maybe a silly question: was it necessary to turn off the light for this infrared viewer? Since it's just 'translating ' infrared light, wouldn't it work under daylight or normal lamp light (which also contain IR light) just as well? It would've saved you some trouble... O...never mind. Should have watched to the end before asking 😂
The red bits is likely made to blend in with lichens high up in the Swiss Alps.
Lichens are blue-green or browning... And mountain infantry weren't issued camo.
How does IANPAT look under IR?
The laundry soap you use can effect the IR
How did you not try the best camo pattern ever created? USGI Woodland.
Cos I don't have any ;)
Sorry, cool vid I guess, but I've honestly never wondered why it's so beautiful. Some things just is and that's good enough for me. 💞
Ah, the good old "Vierfruchtpyjama". Heavy, a hassle to move in, smelly and once wet you'll never get it dry again. I hated it.
Shout out Hebtroco!
What movie is that
In those parts there are Oak forests. Leaves stay on most of the autum even winter. They turn near red in color in the end. Thats why camo has red part, in Germany as well.
Hard to belive that germans expected IR equipment on mass in WW2
They expected if they had it we had it
I live in those parts. You're entirely wrong, sorry...
Oaks don't turn red, oak forests aren't really that common, and autumn is only a tiny proportion of the year.
@@tomhenry897 We had it, but the British RG systems never reached production and the US systems were deployed in the Pacific, but perhaps not in Europe?
I watched some old Swiss army vids and they love rifle grenades and der panzerfaust. Also listening to the French on here sounds indiscernible from France French...for me at least.
I remember seeing blue DPMs worn by police in West Africa (Benin?) about ten years ago.
Carrying all your kit in your jacket sounds like one of those 'clever' ideas thought up with by someone with either little practical experience or trying too hard to cut costs.
It's best application could be for budget airline passengers not willing to pay extra for baggage.
I think it might make more sense for a milicia army like the swiss then any standing army.
Swiss take their service stuff home, anyone who had the pleasure of dragging home all your stuff with public transport might understand the appeal of the integrated storage.
As mentioned in the video, the Alpenflage camo uniforms were not personal issue, so did not go home with the soldiers...
@@Slithermotion Sitting on any sort of chair with the kidney pockets full of water bottles and cook sets is less than comfortable...
Great for air travel as well, as the airlines keep slashing luggage allowances.
autumnflage
I love my alpenflage parka but the hood is massive and I mean massive haha. Not sure if that’s for a helmet or what but it even seems a bit large for that. It is a very heavy jacket probably weighing more than 5 pounds but it is very high quality. Now I need some pants 😂 Great video
Yup, it's to fit over an M18 helmet, which has quite a massive brim
@@BlokeontheRange yeah the only helmet I have is an old green steel helmet with a hard plastic Kevlar looking liner in it with a pretty minimal brim. Thank you for the response
when the sun sets in the sea. white is almost imposible to see. black on the other hand. it realy stand out. It was the total oposit what my father thought and he is from the coast.
Meanwhile orangutans are happy being orange. At least until someone cuts down their trees!
One explanation for this is that the after image on some predator species after looking at bright green sunlit leaves is orange. Some other arboreal species are also orange, red squirrels for example.
W-Ss improved in the 🇨🇭
Is the blue DPM possibly some sort of RAFy thing? Looks colour and style to our modern RAAFy uniform
Nope.
I've wondered about the RAAF & RAN wearing blue and grey camouflage, respectively. If you're ground personnel, blue camouflage is a bit pointless. Unless you'r an aircraft, like Spitfires with the blue undersides. And the RAN? The only thing grey are the ships, and why would you want to camouflage yourself on your ship? To hide from the Petty Officers? 😅 I think it's a "fashion" thing that somebody thought up.
@thhseeking yeah, for the RAN, and RAAF it's more just so that we all have similar uniforms and look like a joint/ integrated force. Plus, I think the cams look much better than the older grey uniform for the RAN
Switzerland should have followed the absolute CHAD of camouflage and used _Ein Strich-kein Strich_ rather than that weird rubberised abomination. Also the Quality of TaZ90 varies so much no soldier of our company ended up with matching fatigues, and let's not even mention the gore-tex.
Brushstroke or lizard would be the coolest pattern in my opinion. The fade resistance also varies a lot with the TAZ90. The newer fabric with the small writings on it would already fade after a couple of washings. And the seams are not strong enough, especially on the trousers.
@@Tony.795 Hell yeah, I'm all for Lizard. Brushstroke is cool but way too african to defend the local pinewoods.
God they are the worst, they fade at different speeds which means you end up with trousers in pinks and beiges with a tint of olive while the jacket still hangs on to the greens and browns although an August WK was enough to let bleach and it catch up.
Camouflage is cool and all, but when you pull your trump card and bring out the Color Blind troops... then you're f'd
Hard to lay down and get low with all that crap in your front pockets.
My take away is that for night ops, if you think the opposition is using active IR, don't wear pure black. You stick out in the reflective background. Now what about camo face paint?
Also, blue camo is way more effective under low visible light than black
Swampy - “SumpfMuster”(???)
Sumpfmuster is a specific German pattern, this Swiss stuff is different
Great video, but I don’t get the decision to keep cutting to a SG 510 propped up on a chair
Swiss Army Knife … Swiss Army Uniform.
They are like dutch ninjas hiding around the alps.....
non-trivial pattern development... the digital patterns have the advantage in having a wide range of perceptible 'patterns', really, more disruptive, without being a 'pixelated' look...I've seen an urban pattern development that uses fairly 'regular' patterns, as you see more rectangular and sharp-edged terrain in urban spaces, and it gas gradients, on some blocks, that reminds one of shadows....
suis que a la moitie mais dejas je me marre :) j etais fusiller de forteresse avec la tenue de camouflage que tu a , et tireur d elite avec le fass 57 avec lunette 77 et la vison de nuit ! alors si y a du rouge sur les taz c est pour les feuilles mortes au sol ! rien a voir avec l infrarouge qui etais une grosse daube ! ce deplacer avec ca sur le fusil plus une enrorme batterie sur le cote ! super facile de ce depalcer sans bruit !
I suspect your child's optics are a image intensifier, not a IR scope
It's IR... I mention having to cover the illuminators cos up that close it's too bright if I don't.
@@BlokeontheRange what is the optic?
@@srtgrayfrance nightoperators.com/products/night-operators-pro this one
@@BlokeontheRange thanks :)
Very homeless chic
Autumn is red it ain't rocket science
a) it isn't red in Switzerland, it's mostly brown with a bit of yellow, and b) autumn is only 1 of the four seasons...
@@BlokeontheRange you know what I meant 🤤
i know this is a silly thing to care about, but the fact the vast majority of armies are phasing out unique camo patterns for multicam and multicam copies is really sad.
See in Ukraine, where a lot of units have had to resort to brightly-coloured tape on uniforms in order to identify who's on which side. Differing patterns used to serve that role very well.
That's what happens when something works *really* well. And MultiCam does work extremely well in most environments. It will be interesting to see, in maybe a decade or so, if some militaries decide it works *too* well because of the difficulty identifying what unit is who and go back to patterns that are more unique, even if they're less effective as camo.
@@DerekIcelord Some of the washed out British MTP looks as bad as UCP though, it's almost a kinda mottled ivory colour and just glows. Looks awesome when fresh and richly-coloured though!
Personally I really like ATACS AU camo, I use it for hunting lol
It is very generic but it works well in most terrain
UCP isn't just useful in grey mountains. It's also fairly good in bombed out urban environments. But for a supposedly universal pattern 2 out of ♾️ is pretty bad 😂
You also forgot it blends in with your grandma’s couch!
@@kiloalphasierraIt also works in yomama's sheets
I'm a sorta semi-pro photographer, and when I look at UCP I just think "Whoever designed this didn't calibrate his monitor" - smacks of someone having to too much orange on his monitor that I'd swear they shot it with a Tungsten white balance.
First time I saw UCP was at Texas Motor Speedway and a sort of urban situation and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Made worse by the crowds and signage, but even out in an open area it was too easy to spot. Then they went with PJ material so the two environs it sort of worked best at wore it out nearly instantly. Modern version of our first camo pattern sent to the Pacific Theater that bleached near white in the field.
@@jpkalishek4586 I honestly have no idea how it got far enough to be accepted. There's not - believe it or not - a lot of blue in nature, save the sky or tropical beach water. There's nothing that's really tinted blue like UCP was, at least not in the vast majority of natural environments. Maybe a slate quarry? It's like the whole pattern was made, then had a blue wash put over it. Sure, you don't expect a camo colour to 100% match to 100% of environments, but it should at least fool your brain into think it's believable the colours are there.
I remember seeing that photo of a US soldier giving instructions to a guy in a ghillie suit in a forest, and hoo boy, it was bad. Almost looked like someone had just photoshopped the US soldier in to the picture, and rather poorly.
Since you mentioned the new Dutch camo Mike, I have a bit of a rant on that...
I'm part of a group of (younger) veterans that love playing Airsoft, and during an outting in Austria, about half the team (we're divided into two "squads") decided to field the new Dutch NFP, the rest of us opting for good old fashioned GVT Woodland, since it can be sourced a LOT cheaper, especially when it's a whole team's worth of gear.
Now, I don't know what it is with the NFP uniforms, but in the (partially) wooded area where we played our game, our boys stuck out like a fly on a white tabletcloth for some reason.
It just didn't work worth a damn unless the boys were staying absolutely still, any movement and they would get spotted instantly.
At one point, I was moving along in front of one of the NFP wearers, NFP boy gets hit, I am seemingly unnoticed so I hit both the "enemies" with returned fire, and when asked about whether they actually saw us or fired at movement, they said, and I paraphrase; "that new pattern doesn't blend in with the leaves when you move, it instantly looks like there's an 8-bit game character moving through the brush, sticks out like a (rather crude Flemish phrase for non-white person in crowd of whites)".
I'm not sure if it was the particular uniforms (though they all came from Seyntex, which makes the new uniforms for both the Dutch and the Belgian armies), or if the greenery in that particular location just clashed with the pattern, but we lost (Royally) to our Belgian opponents, who's multicam just worked far better...
Interesting, thanks!
If in austria, maybe try the old austrian Kaz75 (partially available at Varusteleka relatively cheap). (or even the Kaz03 stuff) Maybe doesn't look like much because unicoloured, but from what i remember during my service time almost 25 years ago, it was surprisingly effective.
From a quick glance at the pattern on Camopedia, it seems to me that the NFP has a problem of micro/macro patterns. A good camo should create blobs/pixels of various colors at various ranges, but without creating a repetitive pattern. For example, an area could have 3 pixels of various shades of green and 1 brown pixel, which would be perceived by the enemy as 4 distinct colors at close range, but at say a medium range of 100m, the 4 pixels would fuse into a single greenish pixel. About the NFP, from a few to maybe a few tens of meters, it looks to me that the pattern is basically a gray/brown background with green pixels on top that are spread out at relatively constant intervals, hence the 8-bit game character comment.
From a further distance, there's the risk that all the colors get mixed into a single blob, and at that point, you'd get an isoluminance problem, where the whole uniform shines uniformly without contrast. This was particularly visible with UCP, and I'd suggest googling Hyperstealth to read more on all the various considerations that get into designing a camo pattern.
About the new Swiss camo pattern, the Multiumfeld-Tarnmuster 16, what's baffling is that it's a further evolution of the TAZ 57. It's basically the same pattern with minor shape adjustments and 4 colors derived from Multicam in flat blobs. This means it doesn't come close to the 7 colors used in Multicam, which btw also often have gradients when moving from one blob to another. Multicam, as well as other digital patterns such as the U.S. Navy's AOR 2, have shown how micro/macro patterns matter, so one would think the Swiss army would have been taking notes about foreign developments over the past 2-3 decades. It's also not very flattering (though PPP changes the picture) that Switzerland has been spending massively more on defense than Ukraine till about 2020-2022, but that the latter managed to create several patterns since its independence, including some that incorporate some three-dimensional elements to fool the eyes' perception of depth such as Predator or Varan, and to a lesser degree, MaWka.
IDK for sure if related or not - the pattern used by the US Marines in the pacific in WW2 did the same thing.
Great when standing still - bad when moving.
@@stanislavczebinski994 Ah yes, the 1942 Frog skin camo... it looked good terrible up close, and blended in worse.
Also, red is the complementary color to green - if You step 3 metres back, You'll see how these 2 most contrasting colors blend together - just like in an impressionist/pointilistic painting, yet reflecting different greens and browns in the surroundings. That's why TAZ 57 is so extremely effective
True, also any green that blends in has red in it. Mixing just blue and yellow dye makes a trash can/street sign green that doesn't blend In with the many shades of green found in nature. Od green has a little red in it, to make it browner than normal green. I can see why they use red, even though at a distance it might as well be brown, which brown itself is sorta a red with extra steps. In the temperate forests in the fall, leaves turn red sometimes, before they turn brown.
Yeah! There are dozens of superb vintage swiss army videos on YT which show this!
I noticed that huckleberry picking. You have to get surprisingly close to even see the berries on the bushes
It follows the standard UK military sizing i.e. it doesn't fit anyone 😆
Q) oi quarter master why so small ?
A) it should fit someone from middle earth
----- BUT I'm not from middle earth, I'm from middle England,
sad-face-emoji
Alpenflage is my favourite camo, just looks awesome. Closely followed by Belgian jigsaw.
The patterns with red in them seem to be quite effective in the North Florida woods in winter. I never knew it was for IRR.
@@dbmail545 The IR effects were news to me too, I assumed it was for the kind of ground cover you get in certain woodlands.
@@dbmail545 glad I'm not the only one up here that wears it in the winter
Cool! not a lot of people like the Jigsaw. I've worn it for 15+ years and it was an effective pattern. sad to see it go
Simple. The Swiss were afraid that they wouldn't be seen and someone might run over them, so they used red paint as a warning.
The Swiss called it Tuti-Fruiti for a reason.
Naughty, naughty, you're not supposed to have a TAZ90 😉
Yes, you can have it. It's just Pitchfork Systems copy of it ;)
The reason the 1990 pattern osnt optimized to provide high contrast under IR illumination is that, by 1990, no credible threat to Switzerland would be *using* active IR (certainly) not to scope out infantrymen), because *everyone* whonwas fieldinf night vision in any kind of numbers was using passive IR (where this camouflage technique doesn't work as well), image intensification (where it doesn't work at all), and thermals were coming online (where this technique also doesn't work at all).
In fact, by the end of the Cold War, ComBloc platoon DMR and antitank weapon scopes were being fielded that had the passive receiver capability of the 1st Gen active IR but no illuminator, because they weren't intended to function as night sights, per se (their detectors were too poor to funtrion as stand alone passive IR sights). They were there to spot those 1st Gen IR illuminators by the beams, so the forces using 1st Gen IR could be targeted, almost as if theybwere running about with white light flashlights and searchlights turned on.
Remember, unless you are *actively projecting* IR light, the IR reflectivity of the target is irrelevant. So, if you aren't really concerned with active IR threats, there is literally no point in using a countermeasure that *only* works against a threat you aren't facing.
This also goes a long way to explain why many early and early-derived camouflage patterns work well under active IR but suck massively under passive (American ERDL and Woodland come to mind immediately)
I suspect that one of the real issues with uniform is that unless it is cut and fitted correctly, so that all the weight rests on the shoulders it probably going to put a lot of very unpleasant pressure on the back of the neck.
Indeed one of the main complaints was poor balancing, especially once ammo magazines started being emptied, food eaten, and so on. It was very much a classic example of seeking so hard to eliminate the worst problems of the old system that you forget what the old system did right, leading to the new system having all the problems "solved" by the old system, creating a vicious cycle as you then have to "solve" the problems of the new system by using elements of the old system!
You actually don't want all of the weight on the shoulders. You'd want a good bit of the weight to rest on the hips as well. This is why both military and civilian hiking backpacks are designed the way they are with a padded waist belt and a frame that goes down to and rests on the small of the back around the top of your pelvis.
Oh gosh finally someone gets it, the ACU felt like a thin cord hanging on the back of my neck, it sucked. Worst part of the uniform, the rest was okay, but that tiny paper thin neck collar was like a sharp edge.
Love alpenflage for running paintballs and ratting cos of the pockets. My 1st jacket was about £13 a few years ago. Now on ebay they're £30+. Have about four complete uniforms so maybe I'll be able to retire early haha.
The Canadians tried carrying magazines at least in their pockets for a while. 64 Pattern webbing I believe had no ammo pouches.
And you lnow what that's called today? "Tactical clothing" and it costs $400 lol
I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but the "Swampy" pattern helmet cover that you test around 21:00 were actually hand-painted, repurposed from the old Shako covers which were in the salt-and-pepper material. Only the single-sided helmet covers were done this way; AFAIK, the reversible ones predated or were contemporaneous with the oversuit trials. Sadly, I don't remember where I read this information, but I do remember it was at least partly from original sources.
I was lucky that we were testing the TAZ83 only problem that we were also testing the new heavy ABC gear. I found it funny that the tent stuff was Zelteinheit 01, 1901 not 2001!
ROP / Royal Oman Police wear a "blue DPM" pattern similar to the first blue pattern shown