My dislike for political adventures as the continued direct involvement in Afghanistan should be known to most readers, but ongoing conflicts nevertheless provide much inspiration for new topics.
One such topic is the camouflage painting of war zone helicopters.
There has been a disagreement about the preferable camouflage for attack and transport helicopters for decades. The choice was between trying to match the sky (in order to be camouflaged against enemies on or very close to the ground) and trying to match the surface background (in order to protect against enemies from above).
A ground camouflage (usually in green, sometimes brown and black) was easier to realize than a sky camouflage (helicopters are usually still too dark to match the sky) and therefore widely adopted.
Nowadays we could ask ourselves why exactly such a camouflage is still so much in use over Afghanistan. There's no threat from above. Camouflage to match the sky is still a quite hopeless endeavour at daylight and unnecessary at nighttime.
We could basically paint helicopters for Afghan missions as we please - unless it's fluorescent or for some other reason visible at nighttime.
That offers the rare opportunity of ditching the camouflage concept and jump on the Psyops band wagon. How about fearsome or morale-bolstering paint jobs?
.
One such topic is the camouflage painting of war zone helicopters.
There has been a disagreement about the preferable camouflage for attack and transport helicopters for decades. The choice was between trying to match the sky (in order to be camouflaged against enemies on or very close to the ground) and trying to match the surface background (in order to protect against enemies from above).A ground camouflage (usually in green, sometimes brown and black) was easier to realize than a sky camouflage (helicopters are usually still too dark to match the sky) and therefore widely adopted.
Nowadays we could ask ourselves why exactly such a camouflage is still so much in use over Afghanistan. There's no threat from above. Camouflage to match the sky is still a quite hopeless endeavour at daylight and unnecessary at nighttime.We could basically paint helicopters for Afghan missions as we please - unless it's fluorescent or for some other reason visible at nighttime.
That offers the rare opportunity of ditching the camouflage concept and jump on the Psyops band wagon. How about fearsome or morale-bolstering paint jobs?
.
Great for IFF also.
ReplyDeleteThere is no enemy air power over AFG, so who cares about IFF?
ReplyDeleteYou are right on of course. I meant it in a broader sense.
ReplyDeleteBut then thinking outside the box, the AFG Talibi are not the only game in town. They border Pakistan, which has American made aircraft and a small subset of their AF officers very unsympathetic to American bases in thier country and to occupation of AFG.