The Army is conducting yet another review of the camouflage pattern of its combat uniforms. This makes it what, the third or fourth such review on the pattern du jour? What I find interesting though, is not so much how much attention is being paid to the debate around the camouflage pattern, and whether or not we need one “one pattern works nowhere” uniform, or several regional/seasonal uniforms to maximize local effectiveness, but how little attention we are paying to camouflaging everything else but the uniform.
One of the first things that leaps out at you about the ACU pattern is its lack of black. “Black is not a naturally occurring color” the Army says, and its use on the battlefield defeats the effectiveness of camouflage. Yet we’re all packing at least one piece of black equipment; our weapons. As a scout looking for bad guys, one of the things you look for is black angular objects, which are universally man made, and on the battlefield usually mean weapons.
So why do we still have black weapons?
I’m not talking about sending all our guns back to the factory to get some sort of high speed “realtree” pattern retro added, but rather just addressing the issue at the unit level and paint them some color other than black. I searched and searched TRADOCs website looking for regulations regarding camouflaging equipment, and other than a circular detailing how to apply CARC paint and what pattern to use on the woodland camouflage pattern on tactical vehicles (which, by the way, still includes the color black), the only guidance I could get on the subject was to ensure that what ever camouflage you use does not interfere or degrade the performance of the equipment, which seems a no brainer to me.
So, having not found anything that expressly forbids painting weapons, I decided to do the foolish yet administratively correct thing and broach the subject with my food chain.
“No” was the answer I got. The rational behind the decision was varied.
“Let joes paint their weapons, and they’ll be tagging them with gang signs.” Ok, a valid concern, so to mitigate that you limit their color options to, say, tan, and you have their team leader supervise them. Better yet, let the team leader do all the painting.
– Eric Daniel
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
As hot as some weapons get, it'd better be engine paint.
How about woodland and desert as default options, and digital, blue tiger, and red tiger after getting 25, 75, and 150 headshots respectively?
I'm still waiting for the sentry guns to show up.
This is one reason the new SCAR's come in Flat Dark Earth color. Black rifles get really hot in the desert sun to the point of being too hot to touch with bare hands at times.
I can definitely see the value in painting your weapons to match your surroundings, even a little helps. You may not be able to paint the barrel to your desired color because of the heat during rapid fire but you can at least hit up everything else like grips, rails, upper lower received, stock etc…
What would you rather have in the mostly tan desert (yes I know Afghanistan is not all desert, this is just an example), an all black weapon, or mostly tan weapon with a little black? A little black is better than all black.
Just have the company's 1st SGT order the unit armorer to paint them. This will do two things. 1 the paint will be same color. 2 the pain won't go into parts it should never touch.
In Woodland, black is used to "break" the shape (of the vehicle) and painted around the corners. This helps to "confuse" the shape and direction.
It is supposed to be "shadow".
In the Dutch Army, we always learned to "break" unnatural patterns in the uniform and on the weapon as much as possible by any means available.
As a boy I used to have a poster on the wall that showed some UK soldiers on patrol during the Falklands war.
After the first (clear) soldier, you saw the rest of the soldiers become blurry and desolve in the background.
The only 2 things that kept visible were their white hands and the straight shape of their rifle. Even at a distance, they were still recognizable as soldiers
Vehicles are camouflaged, People are camouflaged, Why not his rifle!!
I understand the logistical issue of recoloring weapons back at a factory. I also understand the concern of allowing soldiers to paint whatever they want on their weapons too. But, it strikes me as being simple enough to mandate any new weapons be colorized or patterend in whatever way the military decides. Leaving it as is when its such a simple, yet significant, change is silly.
Is this an option?
http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hell...
yes hell i think that might actually be better then black.
Technically, the approval to paint rifles need go no further than the Company Commander, in the Army. The weapons are on his property book, so essentially he owns them.
I say wrap them in some camo "tarp" vs paint.
Any color scheme req & then expose Natural gun Color IE Black.
Make sense
wow surprising amount of trust the leadership has in their joes. if they dont trust em to paint weapons why should they be trusted with multi million dollar weapon systems?
As long as they don't paint them UCP
Why so complicated? Just change the colour of the plastic components (stock etc.) and perhaps the mag and about 50% of the gun's color is changed. Additionally also the colour of the metal parts may be changed. A good example is the swiss SIG 550 http://world.guns.ru/assault/SIG550.JPG
When you're behind cover or peeking around a corner there's only gonna be two things sticking out: your head and your gun.
Having an easily visible black rifle, an enemy can quickly make the connection that there must be a person attached to that weapon, and they can lace you up real bad.
Essentially not having a camo-job on your rifle, makes all the other camouflage you're wearing essentially useless, no matter how good the pattern.
You dont even have to use paint, you can just slap on some camo-tape (or even just tan or OD green duct tape) here and there so that your weapon does not have the distinctive outline of a gun.
It's not hard, it's not expensive and it works. Thats why it will probably never be implemented.
"It's not hard, it's not expensive and it works. Thats why it will probably never be implemented."
sad trth
This is so friggin stupid. Easily solved by a few cans of Krylon spray paint. We've done it for years.
I intend on painting my gun whether its allowed or not.
This would also allow people to personalize and "love" there rifle more and possible take more care of it.
black does not occur in nature? Lets ask the black bears. Black angus beef cows. Black panther. Black wolves. Black bison. Black birds etc… Black does have its place. Hyperstealth has some good theories on it.
Echoing what Angry Pirate says, Krylon is the easiest thing. Be damned hard to make "gang signs" and just have the army order the colors. You can do some damn good patterns and it is amazingly easy to strip off when you're done with it.
And echoing the whole "black is hot" thing. I too have burned my hand on the handguard of my Armalite on a hot day.
Also, if your are worried about gang signs on your guns, i think the problem is more of a recruitment issue instead of what happens when you give a soldier a can of spray paint
However, even then, as long as the gang-sign in question is in OD green or tan, it will still help break up the outline of your gun (and at close range might buy you a split second where the enemy looks at your gun and tries to figure what gang u are from, whereupon you shoot him in the face and say "USA motherf*cker, that's where I'm from!")
The fastest solution would be to order hand guards and stocks in “foliage green” or FDE.
Painting the weapons in our arms rooms? That’s a real time vampire.
And what about units like mine? I’m air defense. We’d only see direct combat if we got attached to an infantry unit.
Just use krylon in one color if the CSM or LTC feels that the joes need it. Make it tan, FDE or olive drab.
This article reminds me of a show I watched on snipers a while back. The last test was for a fellow to sneak up close enough to take a shot in a wooded area while the "target" scans the forest with binoculars and controls another fellow walking through the forest, directing him to touch things the target thinks is a person.
One of the snipers failed. The target could not see the sniper, but could see the black gloves he was wearing…..
I have faith that the guys on the ground will adapt.
But it is unnerving that the Army, which has a few regulations, does not have some for this issue.
Give soldiers some tan and brown krylon paint and watch them fail to dissapoint. Soldiers are sick and tired of being babysitted and treated like children by the chain of command.
Also, Duraheat can be used on the barrel to withstand high temperatures.
The real problem is the statement "black doesn't exist in nature". While that is technically true (outside of a black hole, anyway), it's also irrelevant. The human eye sees the 200 shades or so from true black to very dark brown or blue as the same color: black. We can't tell the difference. Our depth perception tells our brains that the darker something is, the further away it is. This is why the woodland pattern 'breaks up' us up so well. Parts of our uniform seem further away than other parts, so it doesn't register as looking human. Camouflaging the weapon is important, sure, but ultimately pointless until the glow-in-the-light Universally Concealment Proof pattern is replaced.
It's simple, just have a set of different patterns for desert, woodland, etc.
The biggest givaway of a weapon (painted or not) is the straight barrel. even Tanks try to conceal that with netting to make it look like a tree trunk/branch. Why not hide the barrel?
You could use an irregular shaped tube (any nonburning material) that fits over the barrel and fasten to the bajonet socket or a loophole. Paint it like a piece of wood. Use (green) elastic bands to keep grass, foilage or cloth attached as well .
The high placed aiming devices of the M16/M4 weapon family are not effected
- an other example: the kitty corner shot http://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php...
ps. The size of the tube might impress/scare people as well (see: the Sherman Tanks from the movie "Kellies Heroes"!)
I for one question the actual utility of camouflaging our soldiers weapons, but if they want to do so we should offer them that option.
One of the advantages of newer weapons like the Remington ACR, XM8, G36, SCAR L, and so forth is that if you just change the color of the plastic used, you have pretty much changed the color of the whole rifle. This is harder to do with older weapons like the M4 and M16 however, which have more exposed metal surfaces and such. Perhaps just procuring some different color rail covers and stocks would do something to break up the outline however.
In my opinion the US Army should stop waiting for the next big small arms development as they have been for years now, and adopt a new 5.56mm or 6.8mm assault rifle. Then get it from the factory with the plastic a general purpose gray color.
I personally dont give 2 craps as to what color my rifle is as long as it works. I doubt that the terrorist on the other end of the barrel is gonna say "Hey man that is a great tan/green that you used on your rifle. Where can i get that color of paint for my AK." If you really what to camo your rifle then just go buy a roll of camo tape. Its easy to take off and you can put it back on if you want it back on.