How does camouflage work?

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1:12Right now I'm on an unlikely mission. I'm scrambling through a thicket of trees and bushes in a patch of forest just on the outskirts of Prague in the Czech Republic. Big branches, let's do this. Big steps. Well, I say forest. It's more of a public park. There's a couple walking their German Shepherd just over there. There's a bank of port-a-loos by the entrance. But this bit that I'm scrabbling through, it's quite foresty. Currently hiding behind a tree. It is very hot. It's around 34 degrees Celsius today. and I'm entirely cloaked head to toe in a thick military grade ghillie suit. I am warm.

2:00I'm going to find somewhere to hide. Okay, I got it. I got it. This is perfect. Let me just... Yeah. They're not going to be able to see me here. I'm Alex Laffbridge and this is CrowdScience from the BBC World Service, the program that takes your science questions and searches for an answer, even if they're really hard to find. I'm invisible. Can't see me. This week, I'm following the trail of a question from listener Paul in Uganda. Okay, my name is Paul Matavu. I come from Uganda in the capital, Kampala. I'm a botanist. That is my passion, nature. Okay. What was the question that you wrote in to us about?

2:49Yeah, my question was about the origin of camouflage combat wear. How did it originate? And how did it spread to most of the modern armies in the world? What is the essence behind it? Why does the combat wear have to look the way it does with the shades of green? So that was my question. And so what made you so curious about this question? It's, you know, right now there are so many wars going on. You will see these fighters. Some of them are looking very young and they are clad in these uniforms. It gives them an air of authority or invincibility that they wouldn't necessarily have if they didn't have the uniform on.

3:41would fighting be different if we didn't have these types of uniforms? And so why do you think that these uniforms are the blue-green colour? So I thought that it's about camouflage in this sort of environment where warfare is supposed to take place from in the forest, in the grasslands. But why is it even being used in modern warfare? Because in a country where I come from, at times we get riots and then they have to bring in the army sometimes to maintain law and order. And they come with exactly the same way that does not give any camouflage advantage, which got me thinking, what is the use of wearing shades of green in the middle of the city?

4:27In the urban setting, it really doesn't make sense. And me, who comes from a background of nature, forests, plants, I've been fascinated by the green shades of these combats It seems that you know about this You know about the outdoors world I mean, tell me, what sort of camouflage have you seen in the animal kingdom? Yeah, in the animal kingdom, it's really diverse We have a common snake in Uganda It's a green snake And we grow a lot of bananas And it loves to be in the green leaves because that is why it blends better and you cannot see the snake. And of course we have animals like the chameleon who even go an extra mile of changing their colour depending on where they happen to be.

5:17So I guess this is something that we've picked from the animal kingdom. Even for the Amis, they must have picked it from the animal kingdom. But it's something that I would rather want to find out more about. Okay, so where did the designs for modern military camouflage come from? How do they work? How do they conceal soldiers in the forests or the deserts where they carry out their duties? And why do they still wear them in cities where they stick out like a sore thumb? Those are great questions, Paul. His intuition is that the design must have been inspired by the natural world, where camouflage is everywhere.

5:59And I think he might be onto something. So you have to remember that the game is to survive. Not necessarily not to be seen. I mean, that's very much correlated with it. But the game is to survive. Here's someone who can help me find some answers. Laszlo Talis from CamoLab at the University of Bristol here in the UK. CamoLab is a research lab that exists between biological sciences, psychological science, and the vet school as well. We primarily look at animal coloration with sometimes the human aspect as well. Laszlo's taking me through some of the many and varied ways that animals manage to hide themselves in the wild.

6:43There are many different types of camouflage that could be olfactory, like hiding your smell. There is also audio camouflage, but let's just stick with visual camouflage. One strategy is background matching. animals can sort of blend into their backgrounds so you look at the scene if you're a predator you're not even aware that there is a tasty insect there there is also another form where you don't recognize the object as an object of interest so that is typically mimicry kind of like a stick insect a stick insect yes yes yes or a caterpillar camouflaging itself as bird poo basically so who wants to eat bird poo right laszlo's work isn't restricted to the natural world.

7:24Work that he did for his PhD looked at the cultural evolution of military camouflage. I was interested in the social effect of camouflage and how these patterns could have influenced each other. Let's start with some history. Armies haven't always wanted to conceal themselves, have they? Yes, that's very true. For most of human history, the soldiers wanted to be easily recognizable. When you are fighting up close, there is no point of hiding yourself. You have to go to your opponent to fight them. And in that case, it's very important to tell apart who is who. And hiding yourself was considered ungentlemanly.

8:13The British military was wearing very bright red. This changed when long distance firearms became the most commonly used weapon. So one of the first attempts to camouflage on mass scale was actually khaki in India. And what soldiers did is they had very nice white garments, they coloured it with tea or put it in mud, and it got that sort of brownish colour. When did we start getting the camouflage that is so famous today, that green and black colouring? The first pattern mass-produced was done by the Italians. It's called Tello Mimatico. And if I remember right, it was around 1929. After it was invented, it quickly spread to the armies of other nations.

9:05By the Second World War, lots of armies were using a blobby brown and green patterned uniform. But just as quickly, they discovered a problem. With every soldier wearing camouflage, suddenly you couldn't tell who was who. Friend? Enemy? Tree? When you turn around the corner and you see somebody standing there, and you have milliseconds to make a decision that could cost your life, So that's why armies tend to develop patterns that look different from their opponents. For his PhD research, Laszlo collected as many examples of these different camouflage patterns as possible from all parts of the world and all eras.

9:51He's got over 600 of them stored on a massive database on his computer. Most of them are some variation on the classic green and brown blob situation that you'll be familiar with. But some of them are really different. And dare I say it, sort of beautiful. So this one was worn by Romanian special forces back in perhaps 60s, 70s. So this pattern that we see here is called the parsley pattern because it just looks like a collection of green parsley leaves, the stuff that you would put in soup, basically. Picture delicate sprigs of artistically painted green leaves on a creamy, pale background. It looks like very expensive wallpaper.

10:40Sometimes a bit more abstract. So this was sort of like pixelated leaves. This is the 60s Soviet Union. Pea pattern from Austria. Yeah, there you go. This looks like spilled peas. Amoeba pattern. I think this was perhaps one of the first patterns they used in the Second World War. It just looks like a spilled paint, right? It looks like a very difficult puzzle piece, you know. Well, talking about puzzle pieces, so we got several generations of Belgian jigsaw patterns. So over the years, countries were able to develop their own sort of style. Some countries went even further. They used their unique camo pattern as an opportunity to show a bit of national pride.

11:28Here is a pattern from Jordan, a modern pattern. But what is particular about this pattern is this little shape here. It looks like a little arrow. This is the shape of Jordan. Oh. This is a modern pattern from Croatia. And if you look at this shape, this is the outline of Croatia with all its islands. Right. Okay. So countries are actively putting pictures of their nation in little sections of the camouflage as little Easter eggs. That's correct. I don't think this has anything to do with concealment. This is just an Easter egg for soldiers to know that, oh, you are actually wearing the shape of your country.

12:09there is a sort of hidden message there. Now, our listener, Paul, wanted to know why he sees soldiers that come into his city in urban environments still wearing this green forest camouflage. Why could that be? Yes, so that observation is very valid. Just going back to the signaling aspect, In many cases, the army potentially wearing camouflage just to be recognized as the army. So it becomes a signature. And at that point, it doesn't really matter whether it's a matching camouflage or not. That's a really good point. Those soldiers that Paul sees on the streets of Kampala aren't actually trying to hide at all.

12:56They're trying to be as visible as possible. As much as they potentially want to threaten people in certain scenarios, they want to impress they need recruits so it's just going back to the ultimate history of military garment is it also needs to impress the next generation it's incredibly complex and like with that in mind what do you think the future of camouflage could be there is quite a lot of research happening now against artificial observers you know being spotted by drones and we're probably moving towards a sort of Terminator-like scenario that there's going to be more and more robots and artificial beings out in the battlefield.

13:42Yes, I mean, thermal cameras have been around for a while and it's a big focus of the military to camouflage themselves in the thermal spectrum. So it is a massive, massive challenge. You know, when I was a soldier, it was usually battlefield somewhere in Iraq, Afghanistan. So it was a huge difference between the NATO forces and the enemy. Now, on the Ukrainian battlefield, they use more and more these drones and electronic devices, which make all the fighting different. If I've learned anything from sci-fi movies, it's this. When the enemy changes how they hunt for you, you have to change how you hide.

14:26I still remember the first Terminator when these machines are killing the people. It's happening now. You can see drones dropping down, bombs and grenades. They don't have a clue. There is something hanging 500 meters above them. We are trying to protect soldiers from these machines. Here I am back in Prague. I'm not in the woods and in a ghillie suit just yet. Right now, I'm nosing around the workshop of the company who makes it, 4M Tactical. Here's Radek, their CEO. I'm Radek Ducheck, CEO of the 4M Tactical company. Trying to do our best to supply mostly special forces on the world with the stuff they would really appreciate.

15:144M manufacture high-tech gear for the military. Things like backpacks, ballistic armor, helmets or high-tech jackets. Radek is an ex-soldier himself, so he knows what he's talking about. Me as an ex-soldier and retired Special Forces guy, I believe I still have some experiences to shape it and to make it in the way they will really like it. They can just be focused on the mission. That's our task. I've come here to see just one of their latest inventions. It's a cloak that promises to make soldiers disappear, not just to the human eye, but also to the roving, thermal eyes of autonomous drones.

16:00We make soldiers invisible, so they look like they're surrounding trees or ground, so the machines cannot see them. Is this the poncho? This is it. This is the thing which makes you invisible for the drones. They call it a cloak or a poncho, but that doesn't do it justice. It's a whole outfit. Imagine a huge hooded cape that comes down to the knees and two leg parts which wrap around and clip on. When you're stood in front of it, the most striking thing is the top layer. It's a ghillie suit covered in stringy bits of green and brown fabric. Imagine Cousin It from the Addams family, but made out of a bush.

16:47Yeah, we are adding different colours and types of fabrics to just scatter the shape of the human body. So if you would stay like 20 metres from it in the green forest, it would be invisible. But the real magic is several layers beneath the foliage, because that's where the thermal camouflage is. This material is Infrahex laminate. Ooh, it feels, this feels like a normal jacket, but this is cutting-edge nanofibre technology. Yes, so it lets all the moisture come out, and at the same time it protects you from the rain and makes you invisible. Now, hiding something in the infrared spectrum is no small challenge.

17:33If any of your body heat escapes the cloak, you'll be immediately visible to the infrared cameras. And if your body heat can't escape, well, let me tell you, you'll cook. If we would just block the heat, that would overheat the user very fast. So it's actually a combination of some layer which is changing that wavelength. but there are also layers which are nanofibers. And in the combination, we have something very breathable, water-resistant, but at the same time making the thermal camouflage. To solve that problem, they're using a fiber which releases the heat but changes its wavelength as it goes, so it's no longer visible on infrared cameras.

18:18To make it, they've partnered with nanofiber company Respilon and Matej Busgo is their chief technology officer. Yes, hi, my name is Matej Busgo and I am CTO of InfraHex Company, part of Respilon Group. How does this work? The nanofiber membranes are having very important function to homogenously dissipate the heat over the surface. So we don't enable to build up the heat, so we are permeable for the heat, but the infrared cameras are not able to see it. So thanks to this, you are having an ultimate thermal comfort and thermal concealment in the same time. Okay, how do you get rid of heat? Because we're standing right now here in Prague.

19:00It is 31 degrees Celsius. I know this because I am leaking water. I'm very glad that none of you have mentioned it. How do you get rid of heat? The heat in form of radiation, thanks to the special coating and special metalized textile, is not emitted in a wavelength, in a spectrum, which would be visible for the camera. We are emitting and dissipating in different parts of the spectrum, so it became invisible for the thermal camera. If we would use a foil, which would be impermeable, this would result in a very fast heat build-up, and the soldier would cook himself. So it was a lot of development, a lot of prototypes, a lot of iterations, a lot of luck, where we are able to find the combination which actually works.

19:47Why did you develop this technology? The key motivation to develop the technology was connected with what happened at Ukraine. At the beginning, the drones were not really used, except just some scouting around to just see what's going on. As it started to evolve, it became the biggest threat for most of the soldiers over there. And we wanted to respond somehow. So this was the motivation at the start. Okay, so these ponchos, how do you test them? As everything. First, what is made here, we test in the nearby forest, just to see if everything works as it should. And then the later tests, we send it to the soldiers, to units, and we ask for their opinion.

20:34If they like it, we go to the serial production. What does testing out here look like? I'm imagining you wearing one of these ponchos, going out into the forest, and all of your staff, maybe you haven't paid people on time this month, go find him, where is he? How do you test this? Exactly as you described, actually. And I believe our neighbours are sometimes quite shocked because they are seeing people walking in the uniforms with the thermogogles or in these cloaks. can I test it out? Of course let's go to the forest. So far in the show we've discovered where the brown and green blobs of military camouflage come from and how they work to fool your eyes.

21:21Now I'm getting suited up in a high-tech cloak to see if I can fool the eyes of the thermal cameras as well. I'm Alex Lathbridge and you're listening to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service, the show that peers through the binoculars of science to unearth the answers to your questions. And today, I'm on a quest from Paul in Uganda to find out how military camouflage works. Okay, I will let you dress it. This way, you just step on this. Right. This is for your right… Oh, it has to be the right leg. I step on this with my heel, I wrap this round, I wrapped it the wrong way. Actually you did it right.

22:06I know the point of this suit is that it keeps soldiers relatively cool but you know what it's 34 degrees today here in Prague and I am sweating. We call it gators it's like a sleeve for your leg look a little bit like a cowboy pants. I'm not admitting on the world service I'm wearing chaps. okay so now that i'm suited and booted radic and the team have got the thermal cameras out and they're trained on me here are the goggles thank you are you ready to disappear let's see how do i look producer emily wants to make sure that we're testing this thoroughly do you want to go into the actual forest and like crouch that i want to see if we can lose you you want to lose me yeah the bbc crowd science risk assessment did you have losing presenter in the thermal spectrum.

23:00Was that in there? So now we are starting drone with a thermal camera and Alex will be walking in the park and we will see how how this works in this temperature. Alex will be doing that, that's what Alex will be doing, okay. Things I do for you people. Now if you look at the screen and you imagine you are the drone operator can you try to find Alex on the screen now we can see one guy who is like 30 percent visible half of his body and next to him is Alex and he is gray as as the leaves and grass around him so now it it works 100 percent perfect Alex is almost invisible from 50 meters where usually drones are used.

23:51They have no chance to find Alex. Great, Alex, you're invisible. How do you feel? Because you say I'm invisible, but I feel very visible.

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25:23Visit BajaMar.com today and discover a vacation destination where memories are made for a lifetime. Baja Mar, life spectacular. Of course, there may well be lots of incredibly cool camouflage technology out there. But, and you're going to let me have one pun here, we just can't see it. The vast majority of it is developed by military forces, and most of them are pretty tight-lipped about what they have up their sleeves. I think the squirrelling away of technology by states is inevitable. However, if we can develop technology that is equally cool, but people can actually see it, I think that's a really good thing to do.

26:08Not all camouflage is made by or designed for the military. There's some technology that's available to the common man. Well, one of our missions is to make sure that the coolest stuff that is developed doesn't just belong to government organisations. I think the more that technology is hidden away, the less power it has to do good. So hello, my name is Steve Tidball and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Volaback. So Volaback is a material science company that I started with my twin brother. And currently we make what we describe as clothes from the future. And so we make things that might shield you from electromagnetic frequencies or jackets made out of copper that have disease resistant properties.

26:54Another good example would be our Martian aerogel jacket, which is built out of hypersonic space parachutes that landed the last rovers on Mars. I mean, a really good example would be our electromagnetic shielding suit, which is designed to shield you from everything from Wi-Fi and infrared to sort of Cuban satellites. Now, we're here to talk about one specific piece of clothing, your thermal camouflage jacket. So what is it? So the thermal camouflage jacket was a concept piece we created with the University of Manchester that could effectively disguise how hot or cold it looked under an infrared camera.

27:35Okay, so what does this jacket look like? It looks something like a white lab coat. And on the front of that lab coat are a series of about 30 dark grey squares. Each of those dark grey squares is made out of 100 layers of graphene and is connected electrically to a battery pack which is then wired up to a computer. Unlike the 4M thermal cloak, these graphene patches are powered. You have to plug them in. So if this prototype is to make it onto the streets, it'll need batteries. But what that does mean is that the patches can be individually programmed. You can switch some on and some off, or create patterns or shapes in the infrared spectrum.

28:24We can effectively control how hot or cold it looks. The key to the magic is the material that it's made out of, graphene. So graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms and graphene in its purest form is the strongest and most conductive material in the world. The reason we used graphene in this particular jacket is because graphene is what's called a tunable on the infrared spectrum. So if you push electrical current through it, you can make it look like a different temperature than it actually is. Now, in our program, we've been looking at camouflage in the context of the military. You know, in the military, people need to disguise themselves for obvious reasons.

29:11But your stuff is streetwear. It's designed for ordinary people. So why do you think that ordinary people might be interested in, say, thermal camouflage? Well, I think this really gets to what is your view of what the future is going to look like. It would appear that we are entering a more surveilled time than at any other time in history, and that that is only going to increase. And anonymity and sovereignty of your own image and identity is going to become increasingly prized. Interesting that I don't want to become like a sort of urban warrior fighting the surveillance state. I think you end up in a very weird world if you do that.