New fighter jet camouflage schemes

http://markosun.wordpress.com/2011/02/03/new-fighter-jet-camouflage-schemes/

81 60 14 years ago

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astrosi• 14 years ago

This is a pretty old idea however not applied to aircraft, it was used on ships in WW1 and WW2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

philwelch• 14 years ago

It's more similar to the MARPAT camouflage pattern used by the Marines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARPAT

ionfish• 14 years ago

The rationale is closer to that behind dazzle camouflage, though—to confuse, rather than to conceal.

nosse7• 14 years ago

Zebras used it even before that. Practically all camouflage ideas can be found from nature.

ayu• 14 years ago

Except they used it to deter bloodsucking insects. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/120209-zebra-st...

jstclair• 14 years ago

And similar to German WWI "Lozenge" aircraft camoflauge, which I'm surprised the OP didn't mention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lozenge_camouflage

ralfd• 14 years ago

Why did I never see this in movies?

maeon32• 14 years ago

An better camouflage scheme would be to identify the general direction of the aggressor, and take a photograph of the terrain (or sky) in the opposite direction, then tint or color of the airplane with that background, so it blends in.

If the computer could establish the exact location and direction and velocity of the looker, it could make itself partially invisible by projecting to the viewer the same colors that would have been projected had the plane not even been there. With enough knowledge of the viewer, a scrolling image of the background could be projected.

tzaman• 14 years ago

At the speed these aircrafts are moving, I doubt there would be significant improvement over these camo solutions. Not to mention the price difference.

jpdus• 14 years ago

Like that one? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGzpi9lCck&feature=youtu...

cabirum• 14 years ago

Does camouflage really helps in modern air combat? Aircrafts engage each other mostly on beyond visual range distances, and dogfighting in kinda rare now. Also, HUDs should assist in tracking of targets and highlight them, so camo will make no difference. The only use for camo I can think of is to hide the aircraft while it's stationed on the airstrip - in a relatively vulnerable position.

lbotos• 14 years ago

I'm not sure. I read something recently that the last modern dogfight happened around 1999. I'm also confused as to how the concept of "hiding" which way a plane is flying can be achieved with this. If I'm still / have ground support and see something in the sky / radar I'm pretty sure no matter what color it is (even if it closely matches the sky) I could say which direction it was moving? What am I missing? Either way, as a art student that always wanted to fly a fighter jet, these look really sweet!

nosse7• 14 years ago

One of the biggest threads to a fighter is another fighter flying above it. From the upper guys perspective everything is moving and everything below is green/grey/brown or dark blue. At the same time stealth technology is rising and using your own radar might show your own position.

Fighter camo is probably not that big thing, but all things concerned it just might give a little edge in some situation.

maeon32• 14 years ago

Modern fighter jets give pilots helmets which contain a 360 degree view of the battlefield to show them where the airplanes are. The computers which acquire the location of the other airplanes use radar and visual spectrum. What other way can the human or computer find out position direction and velocity of enemy jets who jam radar and camouflage themselves?

History channel has some modern Pilots talking about dogfight speeds of mach .9, radar, and radar stealth (sending back scrambled radar messages) to enemy craft is the deciding factor in a dogfight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnUwxDhE1kU&t=9m9s

Retric2• 14 years ago

What other way can the human or computer find out position direction and velocity of enemy jets who jam radar and camouflage themselves?

Heat and contrail's.

Also, I suspect the best solution to deal with advancing US warplanes is simply a vary large low cost drone fleet. Picture that fight but replace the second squad with 10,000 drones each of which has a single air to air or air to ground missile. They don't even need to use radar with enough eyes you can just triangulate position's and distance.

nosse7• 14 years ago

That youtube video is propaganda. Note how almost every single missile fired by f-22 hits, while enemy missiles lose their target constantly. It doesn't tell why U.S. missiles would be better. Also I find the explanation why f-22 would be better in dogfight to be very lacking. Vectored thrust is not going to cancel effects of high wing loading or slow rate of roll. Or it might but then it's something more harrier style.

tebbetts• 14 years ago

My guess is that most of the camouflage is to hide the airplane from humans on the ground. I would also guess an airplane providing support for ground troops would likely get shot at.

They would paint a fake canopy on the underside of the Warthog: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arnielee/4105880397/. This was to make it hard to tell which way the airplane was turning.

electromagnetic3• 14 years ago

It might be for take-off and landing too when the planes without typical near-ground combat are now extremely vulnerable. The Warthogs are unbelievably built to go through hell and back, an F-15 not so much.

> They would paint a fake canopy on the underside of the Warthog

I'd just hate that someone painted my exact location on the bottom of my plane so the enemy knows exactly where I'm sitting so they know exactly where to shoot at. I mean I'm sure everyone would know where the pilot is, but this would be like the Imperials painting a massive bullseye target around the ventilation tube on the Death Star.

vilda• 14 years ago

The biggest danger in asymmetric warfare represent "stupid" weapons - ballistic or hand-launched RPG weapons.

Misleading camouflage helps you here.

DanBC• 14 years ago

But aren't those ground based weapons? The camouflage is topside of the aircraft.

bdunbar• 14 years ago

dogfighting in kinda rare now.

This is true, now. In large part because the USAF dominates the air so thoroughly that opposing air is toast the day the war starts.

This may not always be so.

marvin2• 14 years ago

I don't have any information about the second Iraq war, but a relative of mine works with radar systems. From what he told me, Iraq's air defense during the first Gulf war was ridiculously poor - the Iraqi air defence forces just turned on their air defense radars and waited to get a bomb dropped on top of them.

Apparently, there was a NATO exercise in Norway a couple of years ago where the US expected the same tactics to be used and hence to easily achieve air superiority. However, the opposing force moved their radar and missile systems around, used the terrain for cover, performed feinting maneuvers by giving the impression that the air defense systems were located in different locations and also obverved using mobile observers on the ground. Apparently, the US lost the air battle spectacularly.

Imagine a military conflict with an enemy that doesn't follow conventional doctrine like this. It's very hard to extrapolate from history how things are going to play out. A large-scale war with today's technology is going to look a lot different than the assymetric warfare the US currently seems to be optimizing for.

rbanffy2• 14 years ago

> the USAF dominates the air so thoroughly

It's more like the USAF never engages opponents that could really pose any threat. It's not very hard to achieve air supremacy against an enemy operating planes 20 years folder than yours. Which is fine in my book: you should pick your fights carefully.

tangue• 14 years ago

All planes I've seen in operation whether in Afghanistan or in Lybia no longer have camo (I'm french and this is valid only for Rafale but I'm curious if in other countries planes are still using camo in operations)

pcestrada• 14 years ago

Rules of engagement may force the use of close-in air combat maneuvering (ACM). During the Vietnam War, the US had more advanced, long range missiles but political considerations forced the pilots to visually identify targets before firing.

Also, against a technically sophisticated adversary such as the Russians or Chinese, the initial exchange of beyond visual range (BVR) missiles will most likely leave a number of aircraft alive. The Russian have the PAK FA stealth fighter in development and the Chinese J-37 stealth fighter had it's maiden flight last year. Stealth technology only makes it more likely that more aircraft survive the first volley. At typical combined closure speeds, there will be only one BVR exchange before ACM begins.

It's also very dangerous to be flying around the battlefield with your radar turned on as everyone else will immediately detect it and mark you as a target as you broadcast your range, speed, and bearing to the world. Typically target acquisition is by other means, such as AWACs aircraft or ground control that guides you into a high Probability Kill (PK) position.

bigiain• 14 years ago

I wonder whether camouflage has changed in purpose (on fighter jets) and is no longer about "fooling" the human visual system, but about fooling computer vision.

I'd guess those "New Aesthetic" style pixelated camo paintjobs would do a pretty good job of fooling OpenCV based classifiers…

sp332• 14 years ago

I'm not sure about airplanes, but I know it's a lot harder for a human to pick out a soldier in digital camo.

thwest• 14 years ago

The purpose of the camo didn't have to change, the purpose of computer vision has been to mimic the human visual system already. Both systems of perception take pains to match the sensed scene against expected structure of objects in the natural world (high contrast gradients at object boundaries, object flow). Anything that can be made to have random structure will provide false cues to edge and flow based perception. There is some evidence of the similarity of the perception systems in projects like SSIM that correlate structure of images under sparsifying transforms such as wavelets to human quality measures.

16s• 14 years ago

See, security through obscurity has a purpose.

Nrsolis• 14 years ago

"Security through obscurity" has ALWAYS had a purpose in the spectrum of techniques used to defeat the enemy. The term is just misapplied in the context of cryptographic systems to denote a system where the algorithm isn't published. e.g. if the security of your cryptosystem depends on anything more than just the security of the key, you're toast.

In NETSEC, we see tons of trojans/worms that try mightily to camouflage their existence with innocent-looking control protocols hidden in normal looking HTTP (or HTTPS) traffic and other things.

philjackson• 14 years ago

I'm assuming camo. is more important for these planes when they're on the ground than in the air?

electromagnetic3• 14 years ago

Near ground too, I would say. Take off and landing is a relatively slow process where they're highly vulnerable, especially the air-to-air fighters.

nosse7• 14 years ago

I'd guess that fighter camouflage also makes fighters more harder to track visually from satellites. This might not interest Americans, but for some air forces it could be a factor?

its_so_on• 14 years ago

I'm curious why you say having fighters be harder to track visually from satellites wouldn't interest Americans - youu say it like America has a monopoly up there...

nosse7• 14 years ago

I thought U.S. has practical monopoly up there. At least in military surveillance satellites.

hmottestad• 14 years ago

Looks like the sort of pixelated image a satellite might provide?

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

So hiding the planes - or at least their model - when on the ground from high-pass recon or satellite views, sounds most likely the primary reason for this sort of design.

sc00ter• 14 years ago

But that's just a bunch of photos. Where's the article, and what's the science behind these?

hedgehog2• 14 years ago

Read these with a grain of salt but this guy provides some insight into the design process for these patterns:

http://www.hyperstealth.com/CADPAT-MARPAT.htm

http://www.hyperstealth.com/digital-design/index.htm

geoka9• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camouflage#Digital_patt...

rbanffy2• 14 years ago

Can't believe the title isn't "the rise of the 8-bit fighter"...

nextstep• 14 years ago

It's just a bunch of photos with captions. Why are those patterns picked for camp? Does anyone know how this camouflage works?

daniel-cussen• 14 years ago

Looks a lot like razzle-dazzle, circa 1914.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

New fighter jet camouflage schemes

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