page_title: Military camouflage
section_title: Other functions
hierarchical_section_title: Military camouflage / Principles / Other functions
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Army Spc. Kyle Nohre, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2-136th Combined Arms Battalion, Minnesota National Guard and Sgt. Filip Susnjara Croatian 2nd Motorized Battalion ‘Spiders’ prepare camouflage before testing their sniper skills during exercise Immediate Response in the Slunj Training Area, Croatia.
context_page_description: Military camouflage is the use of camouflage by an armed force to protect personnel and equipment from observation by enemy forces. In practice, this means applying colour and materials to military equipment of all kinds, including vehicles, ships, aircraft, gun positions and battledress, either to conceal it from observation, or to make it appear as something else. The French slang word camouflage came into common English usage during World War I when the concept of visual deception developed into an essential part of modern military tactics. In that war, long-range artillery and observation from the air combined to expand the field of fire, and camouflage was widely used to decrease the danger of being targeted or to enable surprise. As such, military camouflage is a form of military deception.
  Camouflage was first practiced in simple form in the mid 18th century by rifle units. Their tasks required them to be inconspicuous, and they were issued green and later other drab colour uniforms.
context_section_description: Camouflage patterns serve cultural functions alongside concealment. Apart from concealment, uniforms are also the primary means for soldiers to tell friends and enemies apart.  The camouflage experts and evolutionary zoologists L. Talas, R. J. Baddeley and Innes Cuthill analyzed calibrated photographs of a series of NATO and Warsaw Pact uniform patterns and demonstrated that their evolution did not serve any known principles of military camouflage intended to provide concealment.  Instead, when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, the uniforms of the countries that began to favour the West politically started to converge on the colours and textures of NATO patterns. After the death of Marshal Tito and the breakup of what had been Yugoslavia, the camouflage patterns of the new nations changed, coming to resemble the camouflage patterns used by the armies of their neighbours. The authors note that military camouflage resembles animal coloration in having multiple simultaneous functions.
caption: Croatian army uniform (right) had by 2008 diverged from the former Yugoslavian army pattern, apparently for cultural reasons such as political identification.[12]
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