Zebra Tanks will be the kings of camouflage

13 2011 June 2

The masking of military vehicles with geometric patterns with high contrast affects the perception of their speed and protects them from jet grenades.

This conclusion was made by scientists from the University of Bristol, who studied the so-called geometric camouflage, which is a chaotic pattern of lines and broken geometric shapes. A similar coloring was used on ships during the First and Second World Wars. According to the military, the chaotic designs should not hide the ship, but confuse the enemy observer, violate his perception of the speed, size and shape of the ship, thus the ship’s security from artillery and torpedo attacks should increase. Despite good reasons to believe that the perception was distorted, the effectiveness of such camouflage was never scientifically proven.

Thus, the study of scientists from the University of Bristol was the first scientific search for evidence of the effectiveness of geometric camouflage. Preliminary data shows that it can really affect perception of speed, but only if the masked object moves fast.

Geometric camouflage was hardly particularly useful in the matter of distorting the perception of the speed of slow ships of the last century, but it is very useful on a modern battlefield - for coloring lightly armored patrol cars that are fired from grenade launchers.

Our perception of speed depends on many factors. So, it seems to us that large objects move more slowly than small ones, and objects with differently oriented patterns can be perceived as having different speeds, although in fact they move in parallel. Any of these effects can significantly reduce the accuracy of shooting.

In order to measure the effectiveness of geometric camouflage, the scientists demonstrated two moving objects on a computer screen and asked the participants in the experiment to determine which of them was moving faster. One sample had a uniform color, and the other - a typical “set” of geometric camouflage textures: stripes, zigzags and squares.

As a result of the experiment, it turned out that the perception of the speed of two objects is significantly different - by 7%. In this case, low-contrast coloring gives a smaller distortion effect, and the usual camouflage, masking under the background of the terrain, does not affect the perception of speed in any way.

Thus, high-contrast blinding camouflage can seriously affect the perception of speed, especially if the vehicle is moving fast. At high speed, even a small mistake of the grenade thrower will lead to a miss that will save the crew of the combat vehicle.