New Deceptive Camouflage In Ukraine Invasion: What You Need To Know
Вставка
- Опубліковано 28 чер 2023
- The Russian Navy has started to apply an unusual form of camouflage to hide its most powerful warships in the Black Sea. Unscripted and unedited video, just raw defense analysis. Story broken on Naval News www.navalnews.com/naval-news/... and followed up on Covert Shores www.hisutton.com/Russian-Navy-...
- Розваги
Update: now a satellite overpass allows us to glimpse how effective it is against OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) using free satellite images. See -> www.hisutton.com/Russian-Navy-Deceptive-Camouflage.html
It is reasonably effective, definitely will make it a lot harder.
That Sentinel 2 camera looks worse than the cameras used by Musk on his rocket launches 😂
They did not they tried.
Ain't gonna help mate. 18 ships has been Destroyed or out of Commission......
Honestly I think an easy counter to this is to place an IR or uv camera on the drones as well if the two visuals don't match then the drone operator would know something fishy is going on.
Hi , Could you make a video of this, please?
Hetman Ivan Mazepa corvette will become part of the Ukrainian Navy in 2024
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.
Add in a gale pulling the smoke away in a random direction and it got even harder.
...if ther even is smoke, many eastern block ships release the exhaust under or at the waterline to cool it down so it doesnt go up as much
(ex german navy here, i have seen the east german ships during reunification up close)
Problem being, a good dazzle paint job requires skilled artists.
Spray-splattered binoculars or a periscope. It wasn't just guns they were trying to defend against. Remember that all torpedoes during WWI, and most during WWII, were entirely unguided. Given that torpedoes are known to travel slightly slower than naval artillery shells, it was even more critical to accurately calculate the bearing, speed, and range of your target.
@@hibob841 bearing and range are unaffected by dazzle. The course of the target had to be observed, especially if it was changing course often.
You ever tried to track 1 zebra in a heard well they moving? It’s hard, definitely makes stuff harder to distinguish especially if there’s more then one.
"They're painting them from ocean grey to military grey.... Something that should have been done a long time ago" - Rimmer Red dwarf
“Smeg head!” -Dave Lister 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.
Thank you .
Are pilots officers? In my head officers have a nice uniform sitting in the office with AC. My military knowledge begins at Top Gun and ends at my nerf gun
@@AG-en5y Yes, pilots are officers.
@@bertjilk3456 The police have fighter pilots!?
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.
I remember one tricky captain adjusted his course a tiny amount after each enemy salvo. The enemy spotters didn't spot it, and each salvo was consistently missing by a small amount because no corrections were being made. This demostrates the impact on a slightly different course ( a few degrees difference) causing fire to miss.
Sadly that doesnt work in the radar age
@@TheJttv true, but the slightly easier to spot part would still work today ;) like a teenage girl showing off, dazzle would make a ship stand out a bit.
Hey Russia 1916 called they want their camo back lol
@@stevenpace892 Careful what you say, Police about. HOWEVER the RN did try it 100 years ago and thought it was CRIP IDEA, only made the crew less alert because they thought they were INVISIBLE!
@@TheJttv most attacks on russian ships come from navel drones, they dont use rader but tv guide, so it would still work against them
edit:i just finished the video it says the same thing
Lister: Why are they painting it the same colour it was before?
Rimmer: They're changing it from Ocean Grey to Military Grey. Something that should've been done a long time ago.
Lister: Looks exactly the same to me.
Rimmer: No. No, no, no. That's the new Military Grey bit there, and that's the dowdy, old, nasty Ocean Grey bit there. Or is it the other way around?
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.
You're not exactly trying to hide the whole thing, but you can make it look smaller or make it seem like it's facing a different direction.
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?
that's a question in my mind also
@@HISuttonCovertShores I suspect it is merely experimentation.
3:39 alright the Nebraska with the dazzle camo looks INSANE
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.
9:00, I would think that the paint on the top of the ships is not just for satellite images, the photos are easily picked apart, I believe that the paining the tops is a passive defense against drone attacks. As you so accurately pointed out, the nexus and terminal phases of an attack, either by surface drone or airborne drone, the operator only has a stress filled final few minutes to select his targets. If they are looking for the biggest boat to hit, the paint on the front and back of the ship may alter the operator’s thought processes just long enough to make him select another vessel. So, I don’t believe that you are wrong, I just think the paining the decks impacts(pun intended) whether or not the ship is going to be targeted.
Nah, nato provides the nazis with perfect satellite photos and coordinates saying 'conduct terrorist attack here' so there is no 'stress picking' period, USA decides what to hit in advance and the meat puppets in kiev (if any, because most of the time such attacks are done by western mercs) are only trying to execute orders they were given like it was a video game...
"I understand that everyone watching this is an Ace drone pilot" LOL XD
I spend alot of time at sea, and can say that even merchant ship's or fishing boats with a two block clours, with the back a different colour to hide work stains make it harder to see their true shape. and this is without them being a shade of grey.
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.
Well usually that's what you do, since if you wait until the end you have to stop and not watch the next video until you are done writing! And some of us are struggling writing since English is not our native language for some of us like myself not even the second language but the 3th or 4th...
@@vladimirmihnev9702 What?!?!? The whole point of leaving a comment is to add something interesting or maybe ask a question or just leave a thank you for the video, you cant do any of those things in an informed manner without watching the video in full first, English being your native language or not is irreverent.
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.
Appreciate your work and enjoy seeing you’ve uploaded another one, thanks mate👍🏻
My pleasure!
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.
To your point, it's difficult to even tell the heading of a ship at sea. Lots of videos of kayaks and small craft getting caught in the wash of some huge vessel that commenter will ask "how could they not see this problem the size of a building floating towards them or in their path?"
It's really tough to see even when it's less than a few thousand meters. But will this deceive machines? Maybe temporarily unless this a material with special properties.
@@Chironex_Fleckeri I believe they are piloted by a human through a camera system (the speed being low enough for it to be easy enough to control) rather than a guidance system. Most likely because in a harbour situation it will be quite easy to jam them, set up decoys and as the ships aren't moving they won't have a large heat signature at water level and other boats will do, and those boats are most likely nothing to do with the Russian Navy or if they are, will not be the targets in question so that method is less useful. GPS isn't the most accurate and will rely on data being up to date and laser guidance is impossible as the laser designator will be shot at with the full force of harbour defenses.
Awesome job as always looking forward to your next video you stuff is always interesting and spot on thank you
It also potentially means that the training sets for computer-vision ship recognition systems would need updating as well, and then re-training run on it. This takes a little time. Seeing as painting them like this is very cheap that sounds like a reasonable defence measure that just brings the chances of correct targeting just that bit lower. Ah you've just said this as I finish typing lol.
And there are so many paint options to continue to force guidance machine vision model retraining, and the long tail of firmware updates, etc - paint the centre , paint one half of the deck lengthwise, diagonal strip like a scuba flag, etc. Probably only have to do a new pattern every six weeks or so to keep ahead of the IT crowd trying to sort it out.
Thank you for your analysis! Really insightful
Thanks just found your channel and really enjoyed your content
Thanks for the update
I hear your name often. First time ive watched your vids. Good stuff, thanks for your work
Thanks for watching!
That was even more interesting than I was expecting, and it seemed pretty damn interesting to begin with. Subbed. Cheers.
Great piece! Thanks for the timely analysis!
Always appreciate the info sir.
AI is absolutely a major driver to this...edge detection is a basic building block here, while the human eye can identify the painted craft, AI will struggle to identify those edges as readily and will result in misidentifications. Two things would be interesting if it could be identified: one is how extensive the learned data used to identify vessels is, human intervention might be able to retrain the AI on this relatively quickly. Second would be how the new paint scheme measures up to existing vessel dimensions, some of the images used in your presentation would lead me to beleive there is a deliberate attempt with the scheme to mimick smaller vessels with it. A misidentified vessel would be more desirable than an unidentified one, as an unidentified target probably gets fast tracked for human intervention sooner.
Good work! Thank you
Nice to have you active again
I try
Nice work, thanks.
Very informative video. Thank you for doing a great job...
They are trying to confuse the eyes of missiles, drones, operators, anything pre-programmed. Don’t wanna get picked as a target if you’re confusing what’s looking for you.
@h I Sutton Great sophistication and insight with your interpretation analysis. Thank you very much for sharing. I hope people realize your added-value.
Much appreciated!
Thanks again dude
:)
Very good job on this video!
Very interesting. Thank you!
Thks again, enlightening
thanks for covering this good stuff.
4:30 BAE systems has a infantry fighting vehicle covered in active thermal camoflague tiles which display a picture of a compact car on the side when viewed through thermal optics.
It would be really cool if it could change. With led panels, that would not be too hard.
The technology exists, yes, not sure about whether they’ve actually been deployed or in what numbers. There are worrying cost considerations, among other things.
As always - brilliant 🤩
Love your work. Might even think I brought your attention to Norway and NRK.
Keep 'em' comin'.
No joke, smashed that like button and hit that bell notification, every vid a banger
Top info. Thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you 🙏
That that sneaky ‘deceptive’ camouflage is probably more effective than obvious camouflage I suppose.
Excellent assessment. Confusing some identification and targeting mechanism some of the time would warrant the expense of a little paint.
There's always something authentic and reassuring (relatively speaking 😳)about the way you impart your knowledge - wish I could articulate the sensation more clearly, I suppose it leaves one with the overwhelming impression that this is someone who is willingly putting all of this together...
...with the intent on simply making sure people like me can get informed : no dogs, no ponies.
Many thanks 👍🍻🇨🇦
Thank you.
Excited to hear your opinion on the construction of the Titan sub glue
Fascinating video, thank you for sharing!
Makes sense that everything is tried to confuse drones.
Good video, very interesting subject matter.
May make it possible for it to be confused with a RORO, opponent must get closer to confirm target is the enemy rather than a civilian ship. Gives chance for more defensive options
This is especially true in this combat zone. The black sea is full of non combatant ships.
The subtle dig at Bismarck in Norway was a nice touch.
A good informative presentation thanks.
I always thought that this deceiptive scheme, as seen on Bismarck was to mess with submarines. I can only speak from experience playing subsim games like Silent Hunter. But I always felt ships with those schemes were harder to get a good torpedo solution on, especially concerning angle on bow, since this is the only factor you have to do with your 'guts'. It's also the most deciding one (speed and distance not so much when you have a good aproach). Add in some bad weather and a painted bowwave and you gonna have a hard time determining the the ships bow relative to it's superstructure.
NEEEEERRRRRDDD. _hides the solution wheel he made_
you can guess bow angle based on the course, but if the target is zig zagging, you will probably miss.
If you are faster than the target you can adjust your course and speed until you are sailing at a parallel course. This takes some time, may be an hour of in game time, but you end up with speed and course. If you can get to 0 AOB (i.e. cross the path of the target) the masts and funnels align so you can get the proper course down to less than a degree.
90 degree AOB is also very distinct, the cabin sides will match and if there are masts that are parallel, they will also match. It was a common practice to verify the firing solution at 90 degree AOB and then immediately fire. You will hit at some angle, like 15 degrees, but that is fine.
In best conditions they would do all of the above. Match speed and course with target, get in front, verify course at 0 AOB, plot exact course, use a chronometer to measure speed, get in a firing position, do more measurements, verify course at 90 AOB, fire and mysteriously miss with perfect solution.
There is also the so called 1 minute method where you observe the angle at which the target is, wait a minute and then observe it again. You plug the numbers in a formula and you have a firing solution.
In real life getting the dimensions and draft of merchants was the real gut work. Games have a very small number of designs with exact cutouts and measurements. Real life merchant ships have so many different classes and customizations, that it is impossible to have the list of dimensions of all on board. Changing the mast height was trivial in real life.
@@tarkalak Determining speed is actually the easiest, as you just have to know the aproximate lenght and divide it by the time it takes to travel that length. You can do that from any angle.
Yes 90° angle is easy to spot but ideally you want to sit slightly in front of the target. Early war because of contact detonaters, so that the impact will happen close to 90 (as you mentioned), later on because you are mostly up against convoys and ideally want to hit multiple targets at the same time while having an exit plan. Once they passed that 90° angle you already missed your shot.
Mast height and therefore distance is almost neglectable when AoB and speed is right, it will take the torpedo longer or shorter but you still gonna hit.
Matching speed and one minute solutions are probably a thing of night surface attacks against single merchants, never been a fan of these :)
In '44 with radar, nightflying and so on, I would probably just dump the torps, hide and plot a course to Argentinia.
Bismarck's famous Baltic-scheme was to make her blend in with the rest of her cruisers (carrying similar schemes) like Admiral Hipper. So as to confuse cruisers with battleships and conceal actual forces. And the fake bow and stern-wave to sell the illusion. With your mentioned benefits of making it harder to asses exact heading and speed.
Would be worth considering the paint may also have IR reflective or absorbent properties which would affect target ID by some sensors.
Very interesting video! I assume that kind of camouflage would be even more effective in bad lighting.
7:37 almost looks like they painted one ship to look like 2, rather than painting 2 ships
I wonder if in the future longer ships will be painted to seem like they're two ships
Nice of the russians to clearly identify Kalibr armed ships with a unique paint scheme. Aids in target selection 👍
To hell with corrupt ukraine.
Good stuff!
Thanks
Thanks .
@HISuttonCovertShores >>> Great video...👍
Thank you Mr. Sutton you are a naval mastermind.
Dazzle was also used to make torpedo attacks less succesful, as they were also pretty much unguided.
Dazzle also happened to be the coolest paint scheme ever. Form exceeded function.
Wouldn't the dark paint on the bow and stern also contribute to miscalculating the distance to the ship? If the image appears shorter at the waterline, that may confuse the operator as to the distance between the viewing platform and the target.
Height also plays a big factor in manual rangefinding. Many soviet optics are "target should be this tall at x distance" which doesnt really change here since the superstructure is unpainted
Fun side effect of having similar or the same equipment is that you can see how well it would actually work against enemy optics
To confuse rangefinding, it might be better to terminate the dark area at an angle to simulate a raked bow and angled stern. It may be that they just want to make it look like a cargo ship.
These ships are small. Those ones are far away… :)
I would love to see the return of the “dazzle” pattern ❤
I wonder if this will be flipped on its head - that is if you invent a way to, say, look at a low-resolution photo and observe that the wake doesn't quite look right (seems to be a bit behind where it should be) that the ship will then be identified as likely to be a ship with this paint scheme. If you could algorithmically do that, then you could more easily pick out your high-value targets - because you know your high-value targets will have this distinctive separation between the apparent stern and the wake.
Great video!!! I guess the painted decking could be used to confuse pilots of "suicide" air drones as well. Has there been any more news if the Russian intelligence ship Ivan Khurs was actually damaged in the ship drone attack a few weeks back?
Nope, it was not. The amount of insane barking nato and their nazi puppet would produce in propaganda would be deafening then and plastered on every front page. Silence should tell you everything media don't want you to hear. Like almost no mention of progress of 3 weeks of "offensive" that produced no results save for mountain of conscript corpses...
Any indication of use of deceptive lighting as well?
It is time, Captain! (and it's cold)
Is there any downsides to having black paint for a military ship? Could sun heat absortion become a problem for exemple?
Can increase the IR signature. I believe it's why the US started removing the blacks "shadows" from the white hull numbering on their ships and replaced it with a lighter gray.
Excellent analysis! I know Arron from Sub Brief speaks highly of you.
While it may be an issue using visible spectrum, UV the paint scheme might be useless and in IR its just going to be identifiable hotspots now.
UAV targeting?
Guided missiles?
Radar absorbing black?
Infrared reducing?
Russias going to party like it’s 1899.
Could it affect some kind of Auto- Range finder ? How autonomous are these small drone boats ? You'd need to see a bigger sample of examples of this new trend to see if they share a commonality in length. Scary thought, perhaps it's something preventing a Russian weapon targeting a friendly.
Danke
I like it. Simple, cheap, but maybe just enough to make a difference.
The front fell off.
I Never thouth about AI getting fooled by camo but this might work. Good point you got there.
No 360 cage?
Most war tactics fall into the "might work" category, including the maritime drones. Is radar normally capable of positively identifying target ships? I would think it wouldn't be high enough resolution for that.
This is primarily to confuse visual and infrared anti-ship missile guidance using pattern recognition.
on the low res image of the frigate returning to port, even if they paint the bow, is it not possible to use the bow wave to estimate where the bow is and likewise for the stern? Also is the stern in that photo painted black?
We want more information about submarines. About the metal used, type and thickness
The first thing that came to mind for me was making it hard to discern the bearing of a warship by making night time identification of the bow and aft of the ship from drones.
Could the ship wake be a valuable tool to understand the real shape of the moving object, seen from above?
Very smart thinking! As you say, could someone determine exactly which ship it was based on the wake characteristics at different estimated speeds. Thank you for helping me realize a new imagery interpretation factor. Have a great day!
The last example given definitely shows the bow wave so one would hope so.
In particular the way the back of the ship is painted out could make it appear to look like a tanker or cargo vessel when viewed with a UGV camera
Love your content! Do you ever analyze western technology?
rarely
@@HISuttonCovertShores any reason for this sir?
Perhaps the Russian Navy has decided it can assume most attacks in this war will on its ships while in port. So it can optimise its camouflage for this case.
Ideally your port would not be easily accessible to the enemy, but Russia has to deal with the situation it has.
I'd suggest the AI angle. If the image changes so does the target. Its trivial to hardcode silhouettes for sorting.
What I need to know?
I don’t need to know anything about this, I’m in North America, but I do appreciate knowing about it
Yep, not Rustoleum, too expensive, but, it could be radar absorbent coating, similar to what the subs use. Might give an advantage against radar guided missiles.
Could it have something to do with 'Storm shadow'? I think that Storm shadow must visually recognize it's target.
This is exciting! Well done on the speed of this. I'm a big advocate for naval camo- while its useless against some technology, even a 0.2% increase in strategic survivability is significant for the couple thousand in paint. I think it is good for morale generally too.
The other factor is it just forces us to check more. Reducing certainty is hard to measure but the cost is negligible- I doubt they have paint shortages.
I can tell you are excited too- it makes this so much more fun. You can bet if i was a russian seaman i'd be inundating the captain with potential improvements to the camo design and ideas for roll out matting to change the top down camo on the fly.
The internet's favorite naval focused military analysis nerd. As opposed to our favorite naval focused history nerd, Drach.
Drachinifel makes great videos
But not all homing missiles use radar especially In a high jamming environment. Some missiles use optical contrast homing designs. Dont know how this applies here though.
6:38 this man knows everyone in the comments
4:45 I think they also painted the barrels of the upper turrets, so they look like they are of a smaller caliber
Would the dark paint have any effect on the IR signature? Especially seen through low quality IR sensors you might put on a drone ship? Or would the IR signature of the huge steel structure of the ship just "blast" through the paint?
IR sensors work on contrast.... unless you know of a way to make a ship the same ambient temp, umm, :D
@@maeton-gaming IR = Infrared not visible light , Thermal optics = the visualisation of temperatures
@@isaacnickel That's just marketing. Optics that show difference in temperature are just showing IR intensity colourised. IR optics usually refers to those used with an IR spotlight. The other type are ambient light image intensifiers.
The only way to see temperature at disntance is radiation in the IR range.
The hulls are metal which is a good heat conductor. While the black paint might say absorb more sun light it the metal conductive would disperse some/most that heat. As an opinion internal heat sources like the engines will have a much greater affect. The temperatures are still likely greater than the background. Overall black paint, making those spots hotter, will have little affect on IR.
@@Tanks_In_Space Well, that's what my question boils down to doesn't it? Different colors, especially the more advanced paint systems, conduct heat differently.
(I'm only speculating that such a thing exists for naval applications.)
FTR. I'm not talking about making it invisible on IR, just enough to stop it appearing as a uniform mass.