Infrared Reflective Camouflage: An Introduction

in a world of near-peer adversaries it has never been more important to re-examine the feel of camouflage especially when it comes to night vision in fact ever since night vision devices started being used in warfare various camouflage patterns fabrics and dyes have been used to make sure that camouflage efforts are just as effective at night as they are during the day so today we're going to examine the little known topic of irr compliant fabrics and dyes and show you some examples of this very specific yet extremely vital camouflage consideration so what does irr mean we see this a lot being advertised when a new combat uniform or new camouflage pattern comes out irr stands for infrared reflective to use the vernacular as correctly as possible you can say that a fabric or uniform is irr compliant or was printed with irr compliant dies and infrared reflective dyes and patterns are what we want this might be a hard concept to understand because one of the main camouflage tenets is reducing shine in the field of camouflage we try to reduce reflections and shine so what's the deal well with fabric dyes it's a little bit different the opposite of infrared reflective is infrared absorbing which we do not want we want light to bounce off of a piece of fabric and reflect in the same way at night as during the day to put it as simply as possible irr compliant fabrics retain their patterns when viewed at night under night vision devices fabric that was printed with dies that are not irr compliant will turn all one color at night and the camouflage pattern will disappear since this is a hard concept to talk about let's jump to the tactical garage where we can see some examples we filmed this indoors so that we can control the lighting conditions more easily just as a slight spoiler we're not going to be featuring so many official military uniforms because roughly 99 of all military uniforms are irr compliant so it's not really going to be that surprising this is why you don't really see this this being a huge deal for militaries because they can purchase a fabric that is irr compliant this really comes into play when you're trying to buy accessories for things or if you're trying to buy some aftermarket or third-party camouflage stuff to match uh normal military stuff so just wanted to kind of let you know that we're showing a lot of weird and random things that kind of illustrate the point of why irr compliant fabric is such an important thing and up first let's take a look at some samples under normal daylight conditions all right so up first are a set of normal mechanics multi-cam gloves these are the kind of gloves that you buy at the px or just you know at a hardware store or someplace up next is an arcturus leaf suit now this is the kind of suit that you'd buy on amazon as kind of like a knockoff for a more traditional russian fsb style leaf suit so arc choices is a well-known brand for that kind of thing so there you go they make a lot of good stuff but um this particular leaf suit performs kind of interestingly as you'll see later on up next is an official british military combat top now this is kind of their version of the um us military combat tops as you can see it's in the british pattern pretty standard combat top you can get these from any surplus outlet really they're very common up next is the con camo ghost hoodie now this is one of the more specific kinds of camouflage it's one of the more tailored specifically to be irr compliant styles of camouflage garment so this is the green variant as you can see here and this is the con camo brown ghost hoodie with a little bit of extra foliage there so i'm going to show these at the same time because they kind of perform very similarly but again con camo specifically is marketed as being irr compliant so just keep that in mind as we move forward up next is a set of generic cheap chinese knockoff multicam set of over whites this is the cheapest thing you could possibly find on somewhere like amazon or ebay so we'll see how that does up next is a combat top made by blackhawk this is made out of official u.s grade u.s military uniform grade multicam i just wanted to show that this is in fact official branded multi-cam fabric and it's supposed to be irr compliant um these kind of tops were are not military issue but i just wanted to show the fabric just so that we have a baseline for what multicam looks like because everybody sort of knows what multicam is up next is the helicon tex swagman roll in flectarn color this is kind of their version of the us military poncho liner again in the flectarn camouflage pattern and up next is an interesting one this is an arctis combat smock in the swedish m90 sort of splinter variant camouflage the desert variant now you might notice that this is a bit darker that's because this particular garment has been dyed with rit synthetic dye so i just wanted to see what this would look like underneath these conditions up next is an angolan military uh angolan armed forces pancho this is their official angle and military poncho and as you can kind of see there are some issues with this even under the daylight with regards to shine so we'll see how that performs under the night vision setups up next we have the official us military pancho liner and of course woodland in many one woodland as you can see this is the official u.s military poncho it is not a knockoff this is important to remember because as you can see it's quite shiny even under normal daylight cameras and finally we have a backpack cover made by miltek this is a rain cover for a rucksack not sure what size i can't quite remember but it's again in the german flectarn pattern and as you can see again it is shiny under normal daylight conditions so we'll see how that works under the nighttime conditions all right so now let's take a look at some of these samples underneath night vision conditions so to set up the scenario uh the main camera we're going to be using here is a psionics aurora color night vision camera that's going to be the main view and then off to the side on the right side of your screen is an l3 white phosphor pvs14 and the reason that we're doing this dual camera setup is because traditional night vision tubes analog night vision tubes both white phosphor and the arena regular green ones uh they're far more forgiving when it comes to irr compatibility you might find that some of these fabrics look a lot different under a normal night vision tube but when it comes to other kinds of sensors they're a lot more obvious especially when it comes to ir illuminators so for some of these fabrics the ones where it matters kind of the most we're going to illuminate them with an ir light source now this introduces a little bit of bias into the system but we figure hey look in today's modern world ir devices are extremely common and it would not be a very good thing for your fabric that you choose for like a uniform to be okay under normal night vision conditions but if somebody's out there in the woods sweeping around with an ir light and you start glowing like a neon sign that's probably not a swell idea so for some of these fabrics this matters a lot more than others and i just wanted to briefly mention that because the ir light tends to wash out the aurora camera kind of a lot it looks a lot more obvious on film than through like the viewfinder of the camera so just keep that in mind is that it's going to change the way things look a little bit right so just keep that in perspective so we're doing things a little bit out of order up first we have the british combat top in desert dpm this one looks pretty good underneath both the normal night vision and with the ir illuminator turned on as you see with the aurora camera the die retains its color it retains its maybe not its color but you can actually still see the pattern right so even with the ir illuminator turned on on both the aurora camera and the pvs 14 you can obviously see that it still works so this is what we would consider the basic benchmark for most military uniforms with regards to ir compliance up next are the sort of knockoff snow pants as you can see underneath the aurora and the pvs14 it looks normal until you click on the ir illuminator the ir illuminator kind of highlights that this fabric is most certainly not the dyes in this fabric are not irr compliant the color washes out now again on the pvs14 the ir illuminator does not really wash out the colors too much so this is kind of one of those in between it's not really obvious that it's not irr compliant but you can definitely tell that an ir source an infrared light source is going to change the way this fabric looks now again for a snow camouflage is this really is it really necessary to have irr compliant fabric i don't know that's really up to you but in a snow environment i probably wouldn't mind this too much either way it's kind of interesting to note and up next are of course the ghost hoodies both the green and the brown now again like i mentioned the ghost hoodie is very heavily marketed as being irr compliant so it is no surprise to find out that uh even underneath a very strong infrared light source both versions of the ghost hoodie work just fine you can still see the pattern you can still see the contrasting colors this camouflage is of course effective underneath irr conditions right so the irr dye in the fabric is actually quite effective and up next is old faithful the official us military poncho liner again under normal conditions it looks fine but when you turn on the ir limiter you can clearly see that this is not irr compliant now this is one of those interesting cases because if you mess around with it a little bit like i'm doing here and trying to get it to work if you try to be as generous as possible you can clearly see that it might be the actual fabric and not the die because there is a almost like on the pbs14 side of things it looks like it gets cloudy because the fabric is what's reflecting the fabric is actually reflective because it's mostly of course made out of plastic right the die used to make this poncho liner might actually be irr compliant if it's tested in a lab setting but in the real world as you can see it is quite bright it is highly reflective underneath an infrared light source if you were using this out in the woods and someone had an infrared illuminator man they would they would uh light you up pretty quickly um so in real world testing this is where things get a little different than in a lab setting up next is helicon texas version of the poncho liner the swagman roll and as we can see here it kind of has some of the same issues it's highly highly illuminated on uh an infrared light source even on the pvs14 version is very much washed out now granted under under the aurora camera it's washing out a lot more than i think is accurately representative and just to prove to you that there's no trickery here is the ghost hoodie on top of the gila context swagman roll um just to show you what a true irr compliant die looks like next to an irr non-compliant die the results are quite different even underneath the pvs14 which is again far more forgiving with regards to camouflage patterns up next is the miltek uh rucksack cover in flectarn this is the one that was very shiny to the naked eye under daylight conditions so again no surprise that this die in this uh the die used in making this particular item is nowhere near irr compliant so not really good source it's even worse if you shine a light directly on it that's where where even the pvs14 reveals that it is very much not compliant so this is a problem with a lot of waterproof articles all right up next is multicam so this one should work pretty well wait a minute what's going on here this is extremely bright uh it's quite reflective underneath the aurora especially what is going on here this is supposed to be official licensed multicam and it is glowing like a neon sign something else is going on here what could it possibly be some of you might have already figured this out but we'll take a look at this multi-cam pattern a little bit later and again just to kind of keep in the theme with multicam these multi-cam gloves made by mechanics they're of course not any kind of irr compliant they absorb all of the infrared light and just reflect back a single color so all the pattern from that multi-game is gone the second that you put an illuminator on it up next is the arcturus suit and i think that it's kind of obvious by now that some of the more cheaper chinese quality type things are not going to be irr compliant this one didn't do too bad until you turn the ir limiter on it like very strongly and then of course all the pattern goes away you have to remember again this is a 3d suit so you're kind of comparing apples and oranges right but you can clearly see that even with a 3d suit none of the dye in this is irr compliant and it is very very obvious you become one color one shape out in the woods if you were using this and someone had an irr source and up next is the angolan military poncho and really this one's just to kind of make everyone feel a little bit better because this one performs very very poorly there is not only does this not have any irr compliant dye in it but it also is very much plasticized remember this was shiny to the human eye just under daylight conditions it doesn't look too bad underneath the pvs14 until you turn the ir light source directly on the poncho and you and then even the pvs14 is like nah dude that ain't gonna work just keep that in mind with a lot of rain garments you're gonna have these problems and then finally one of the more interesting samples here the arctis uh combat smok that has been dyed a slightly darker brown this one you can judge for yourself but to me this looks like the clear winner in this sample lineup i don't know if this is due to the pattern or or what but i tried to get this this garment to fail i tried to get this pattern to fail but as you can see here even under the absolute strongest ir illumination you can still see every single bit of the pattern like you can distinguish you can even distinguish between light tan and like the even lighter tan in the m90 pattern that to me that just blew me away uh that's very fascinating and again i don't know if this is because of the the pattern itself has larger larger chunks larger fractal elements i don't i don't know but that probably has something to do with it but again i tried to get this one to fail because i thought that maybe the rit synthetic die would have some impact on it and i think that the rit die just kind of disappears because the rit dies obviously not irr compliant but underneath is still the desert pattern right so under night vision devices it doesn't it's a non-starter it doesn't matter but this does go to kind of show you that if you have a a garment that or or some kind of fabric that is not irr compliant and you try to dye it you gotta use an irr compliant die because this just turns back to its normal color underneath the night vision devices so again very fascinating test very fascinating set of of examples and i think this proves kind of a lot of different things and so we come back to multicam why is this particular combat top glowing when it should be perfectly irr compliant well to take a closer look at this we have zoomed in to a piece of raw multi-cam fabric straight from the factory never been cut or put into any kind of clothing as you can see this multi-cam fabric straight from the factory is perfectly irr compliant you can see the entire pattern it's perfectly fine and there's nothing wrong with it whatsoever so what is wrong with this combat shirt we can see that if we compare the two together they look very different even though they're made out of the exact same fabric so what's going on here well some of you might have deduced that the problem here is what we call optical brighteners you know those laundry detergent commercials that advertise oh we keep your whites white and your colors vibrant you know all those kind of buzzwords for the advertising of laundry detergent well guess what optical brighteners and laundry detergent completely negate all of the effects of irr compliant dye optical brighteners leave a very thin film residue over the threads of fabric in normal civilian life this doesn't really matter it actually makes your clothing look a little bit better i guess but in a tactical setting this makes you glow like a highway sign so the lesson learned with this is do not use optical brighteners on your tactical clothing i myself try to use detergent that does not have any optical brightening agents in it anyway for my regular clothing as well just because i'm kind of an idiot and i always forget and as you can see the effect is quite significant so i myself just tend to use laundry detergent that doesn't have optical brighteners in it it's a challenge but you might have to buy some organic stuff who knows really just check the bottle to make sure that you don't have any optical brighteners in your particular laundry detergent and just as a side note now that we know about optical brighteners you can go back and look at some of the other examples and that we've covered today and see that there are a couple of examples that look like they might have used optical brighteners the the best example of this is the us military poncho liner this when i first got it and took it out of the package and looked at it under night vision this is exactly what it looked like it has never been washed with an optical brightener it just looks like that it looks like somebody washed it with an optical brightener before it got sent to me but it was still brand new when i got it so just so you know sometimes things are treated with optical brighteners in the manufacturing process sometimes they're not my sneaking suspicion is that this poncho liner was probably made with irr compliant dies you can clearly see the multi-cam pattern underneath the fabric but it was also probably treated with an optical brightener at some point in the process or it could just be the fabric itself like i mentioned earlier it's really hard to tell all i know is that the effect is the same this sucker is really bright under a night vision device so what are some of the lessons learned from all of this information today well for one we can clearly see that fabrics and dyes are not simply irr compliant or not irr compliant there is a whole range of levels of effectiveness and because of this not all irr fabrics and dies are created equal some fabrics are really not that effective at breaking out the different colors and tend to blur together as one color even if they are labeled as being irr compliant and other fabrics that are not even advertised as being irr compliant actually work really well pattern has a great effect on visibility at night even if the dyes used are irr compliant micro patterns and multi-scale camouflage schemes such as pixelated digital or fractal patterns might actually have a hard time breaking out and differentiating one color from another under night vision conditions fabric composition also has a huge effect on visibility with a night vision device you can have the most effective irr dye on the planet but if the fabric is extremely synthetic rubberized or plastic it will be shiny and reflective in the traditional camouflage sense which is not good remember fabric reflecting irr dies is good but fabric being reflective like a highway sign is not good sort of along the same lines as fabric composition fabric coating matters a lot too rain gear is the biggest defender in this category so much so that we are going to do another video at some point on just rain gear and how different water repellent fabrics shine under night vision conditions the good news about rain gear is that chances are if you are wearing rain gear you're going to be wet and water reflects light anyway so this really matters more for clothing and gear that you treat yourself to be water repellent again this is its own rabbit hole that will go down in due time ir illuminators are a great equalizer in that they separate the good patterns and dies from the ones that are less effective gone are the days when the benchmark for irr compliant fabrics was simply to look at the pattern through a pvs-7 modern warfare has changed patterns and dyes that can stand up to being blasted with an ir illuminator and don't glow like a neon sign are preferable and finally optical brighteners in most modern laundry detergent present massive vulnerabilities that negate even the best irr compliant fabric dyes always avoid washing your tactical gear camouflage clothing or uniforms in laundry detergent that has optical brighteners in it so if you're looking to buy gear that doesn't make you look like a d.o.t sign at night what can you do well there's not really much that can be done honestly because of the wide range of effectiveness of irr dies for the most part you're just going to have to buy gear that looks like it might work and then test it to be sure a good way to increase your chances of success is to check with a company to see if they are using irr fabric dies send them an email and ask them if you get a response and the person doesn't know what you're talking about i would you know probably avoid that company and for the companies that manufacture gear now is your chance if you've got a product that is irr compliant or does really well under ir conditions advertise it i myself buy most of my gear from small one-man companies and it would be really great to see gear makers actually including a fabric's irr status or even better photos of what a product looks like through a night vision device with an ir illuminator because even a lot of the bigger companies out there are supposed to be using official irr compliant dies but they are not some companies manufacture products specifically advertised as being irr compliant like the con camo ghost hood of course there's no way to be completely sure but chances are if a gear company even knows what irr dies are that's a step in the right direction you can be sure that pretty much 100 of the gear made for the airsoft market or made in china is not going to be irr compliant unless it's made with officially licensed fabric i don't mean to knock the airsoft market but i personally would avoid products that are not made with official fabric or look like they might be knock-offs of something else again i don't necessarily have a problem with buying knockoffs for specific things but in the field of camouflage you really do need the real mccoy also do not use optical brighteners use natural detergents if you can and if you use a highly manufactured product check to make sure that it does not include optical brighteners even if it is organic if you have already washed a bunch of gear with detergent that has optical brighteners wash it again several times with detergent that does not have optical brighteners the brightening solution is like a thin film on the fabric threads but it should come off if you wash it enough on some fabrics it will never come out so you might be screwed in some situations there's really not much anyone can do to help you in that situation so prevention is really your best shot and while i'm on the subject be careful when buying gear on the secondary market especially stuff that's normally washed like if you're buying a chest rig or a rucksack or something online on ebay or something like that you probably don't really have to worry about it too much especially if it's like an official surplus item because most of the time you don't really wash rucksacks unless it gets extremely filthy but but if you're trying to buy a really rare clothing item chances are it's going to be washed with optical brighteners because the surplus shops just don't know that you can't wash this stuff with regular detergent and as a side note now that we've done a video on this topic my guess is that the secondary market like on ebay for gear particularly uniform items or any kind of clothing really is going to be flooded with people who went to their closet looked at their stuff with a night vision device and realized oh my gosh i watch this with optical brightener and it's never going to be the same again so just be mindful of people trying to unload their gear on the secondary market and at the end of the day test your gear and your buddy's gear it would suck to get all the way out to the field just to find out that you glow in the dark and it would suck even more for your gear to be on point but the guy standing three feet away from you is glowing like a federal agent in an online chat room the unfortunate part about all of this is that you might not be able to tell if something is irr compliant until you buy it and then you've got to either return it or figure something else out either way test and make sure that you don't glow in the dark before you go into the dark all in all these are some pretty interesting findings and interesting things to think about and fear not we are currently working on setting up some more realistic camouflage comparisons in the future so do not be upset if your favorite camouflage did poorly even if you do some testing on your own there might be some redeeming attributes that we will explore under a variety of sensors conditions and environments at a later time so thanks again everyone for watching thanks for your support and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade