Update: now a satellite overpass allows us to glimpse how effective it is against OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) using free satellite images. See ->

We usually only see photos of Dazzle camouflage up close. From 8 to 12 miles away, on a rolling ship, through spray splattered binoculars, dazzle camo really did disrupt your ability to figure what direction the distant ship was going.

"They're painting them from ocean grey to military grey.... Something that should have been done a long time ago" - Rimmer Red dwarf

I'm a retired military officer (RAAF), and it's clear to me that you know what you're talking about. I really enjoy (and appreciate) your non-commercialised, straight-talking analyses. Please keep doing what you do.

dazzle camoflage was studied extensively. It actually made the ship a tiny bit easier to spot, but very hard to hit with guns. Its effect was not on the range, but on the "angle on bow" approximation of the target. This was a guess made by the observer of the course of the target relative to their own ship. The two ships would always be moving, so being slightly off on this would cause shots to miss by a few yards.

My dad did a lot of work on optical camouflage in the 90s and it turns out a simple two tone works really well on big things like tanks and (I assume) naval vessels.

Lister: Why are they painting it the same colour it was before?

3:39

If anyone is wondering what the advantages of low resolution imagery is: in general, low resolution imagery covers more surface area quicker. For satellites, they can only collect so much surface area per orbit. A satellite might only be able to capture a handful of spots in a battle space as it passes overhead--because the satellite has to be reoriented for every spot and reorienting a satellite is not instant and requires power. A low resolution satellite will cover more surface area. Since there aren't an unlimited number of high resolution satellites, the low resolution will fill in the gaps. Ultimately resulting in higher revisit rates for a given location.

Does the fact that the Makarov's heli deck has also been painted black, while Essen's has not, suggest that Makarov is not currently operating a helicopter, so painting out the landing zone is not a concern?

I don't think I've ever seen a comments section so full of people who clearly commented after watching for about 5 seconds, not sure what they are thinking when they do that.

9:00

Another trick was to make your ships of different sizes, as close to the same shape as possible. At a distance, a cruiser, battleship, and destroyer could be confused for each other, which could be quite useful.

"I understand that everyone watching this is an Ace drone pilot" LOL XD

Appreciate your work and enjoy seeing you’ve uploaded another one, thanks mate👍🏻

Thank you for your analysis! Really insightful

Also not just is it high pressure these kinds of effects work even better when the ship is at even just a slight angle, which is not an unlikely scenario. It is also more basic than ww2 types as those where designed for when the ship is moving so would include fake bow waves to make it harder to tell the speed of the craft and other paint schemes to make it hard to tell direction of travel. These being done for ships in harbour as an emergency measure and therefore not moving means those would not be as useful, however I imagine we will see further developments.

Awesome job as always looking forward to your next video you stuff is always interesting and spot on thank you

Great piece! Thanks for the timely analysis!

Thanks for the update