The Art of Camouflage

Camouflage is something I think most people don’t give much thought to. There are 5 types I will discuss here.
1. Camouflage of Action
2. Camouflage of Persons in an Urban Environment
3. Camouflage of Buildings in an Urban Environment
4. Camouflage of Persons in the Wilderness
5. Camouflage of Buildings in the Wilderness

1. Most people understand that Camouflage of Action needs to appear random. Random location, random time, random method. What most people don’t understand is mathematical randomness. If you never do the same thing the same way at the same time twice, it’s not random, it’s evenly distributed. But you have to balance that in such a way as to not allow a discernible pattern of actions to emerge. You also want clusters of actions to be varying distances from your home base. Map out all your planned actions. Draw a circle around those actions. If your home base is near the center of that circle, you’re not being random.

2. In any kind of visible Camouflage, you are aiming to blend in with your surroundings. For urban areas, you don’t want to stand out among the population. In the business district, a suit and tie. In the suburbs, jeans and a t-shirt. Act natural. Walk at a normal pace, stay calm. Don’t do anything that would make you seem out of place. When your action is over, fade into the crowd.

3. Once again, nothing out of place. A ton of people coming and going from a house or abandoned building screams illegal activity. But if a bunch of “construction workers” show up and then an abandoned building suddenly has a new sign out front, it could go quite a while without being discovered. Also, never have everybody in one place at one time. Use your secure coms to keep in touch. Have multiple bases of operation.

4. In the wilderness, you want to look like part of the landscape. This is where your clothes make you blend in with landscape instead of people. The patterns of homemade camo clothing can be random (see #1). For military surplus or hunting camo, it isn’t. The pattern and contrast matter as much as the color. Look at the types of landscapes that dominate your area of operations. Look at those dominant colors. Now find camo clothing that is closest to those colors with mid-to-high contrast. If you can find that in digital camo, all the better. I personally prefer Predator brand camo because it has both micro and macro patterns with mixed contrast. The military surplus Multicam pattern has good contrast and good micro patterns.

5. Camouflaging a building in the wilderness takes some work. The best way is to bury it away from regularly traveled areas and avoid taking the same path to it very often (which would create beaten trails). You need to keep it out of view of rivers, lakes, roads, other buildings, and aircraft. During construction, you can use camouflage netting to keep your project from being spotted, though it isn’t 100% effective. You should cover the top of your structure with 8” of soil, and a layer of sod to reduce chance of detection by heat detecting cameras.  The heating system should be vented a minimum of 100 feet, and up to 300 feet away.  The sod on top of your structure should be scattered with branches and leaves in a truly random pattern, not evenly. Nature is random.