40% more effective with pixels

There was a time, up until somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, when I would, like many a youth, wear camouflage gear - in my case generally, or thinking about it, exclusively a British Army combat smock (1980 pattern, as modelled by the Paras and Marines in the Falklands). Government surplus is generally cheap, and despite the occasional disparaging report in the press, hard wearing and well made.

I still have the smock, though it has (ahem) unaccountably shrunken over the years and no longer fits. Whatever the limitations of the British Army in equipment, the actual troops are first class, and they do not tend therefore, to need uniforms for people whose shall we say, vertical hold has gone. Neither do we tend to breed seven foot giants in the UK, so there is a point beyond which the uniform sizes do not tend to go. The Germans on the other hand, do tend to bred bigger specimens, and up until quite recently, I could wear my Bundeswehr shirt quite comfortably. Alas, that too has now shrunk, though like my camouflage smock, I have yet to dispense with it in the vague hope that one day it will fit again.

It seems that the US Army and Marine Corps do however, recruit giants of mythic size. It's all those corn fed Good-Ole boys from the Mid-West farms, I guess. DT, who is even more generously proportioned than me (taller, also)has acquired a set of US Marine combats for when he is out airsofting. These items do indeed fit people of our body type, though I suspect that the bulges are in all the wrong places when we don them.

The point of all this rambling is to say that being new (and yet surplus!) items, the combat smock and trousers are in digital camouflage patterns, or Nintendoflage as we like to call it. Put these clothes on and you are a walking black, green and khaki pixelation. I read somewhere that digital camouflage is 40% more effective than standard camouflage patterns. How the hell do they measure that? Do they put a thousand squaddies in a big field and fail to count them?

"Sir, I count 40% fewer men in nintendoflage than I do in regular".
"Very good, Lieutenant. You may let the dogs loose".

40% more effective with pixels

There was a time, up until somewhere between fifteen and twenty years ago, when I would, like many a youth, wear camouflage gear - in my case generally, or thinking about it, exclusively a British Army combat smock (1980 pattern, as modelled by the Paras and Marines in the Falklands). Government surplus is generally cheap, and despite the occasional disparaging report in the press, hard wearing and well made.

I still have the smock, though it has (ahem) unaccountably shrunken over the years and no longer fits. Whatever the limitations of the British Army in equipment, the actual troops are first class, and they do not tend therefore, to need uniforms for people whose shall we say, vertical hold has gone. Neither do we tend to breed seven foot giants in the UK, so there is a point beyond which the uniform sizes do not tend to go. The Germans on the other hand, do tend to bred bigger specimens, and up until quite recently, I could wear my Bundeswehr shirt quite comfortably. Alas, that too has now shrunk, though like my camouflage smock, I have yet to dispense with it in the vague hope that one day it will fit again.

It seems that the US Army and Marine Corps do however, recruit giants of mythic size. It's all those corn fed Good-Ole boys from the Mid-West farms, I guess. DT, who is even more generously proportioned than me (taller, also)has acquired a set of US Marine combats for when he is out airsofting. These items do indeed fit people of our body type, though I suspect that the bulges are in all the wrong places when we don them.

The point of all this rambling is to say that being new (and yet surplus!) items, the combat smock and trousers are in digital camouflage patterns, or Nintendoflage as we like to call it. Put these clothes on and you are a walking black, green and khaki pixelation. I read somewhere that digital camouflage is 40% more effective than standard camouflage patterns. How the hell do they measure that? Do they put a thousand squaddies in a big field and fail to count them?

"Sir, I count 40% fewer men in nintendoflage than I do in regular".
"Very good, Lieutenant. You may let the dogs loose".