For decades we talk about stealth technology in aviation, x-th generation fighter, radar absorbing materials and so on. And now there is a war, with everyone having air defence available, and in the air, we see hobby camera drones dropping grenades and moped drones with a technology advancement to get black paint.
Years ago the US Air Force commissioned a study on what would be the stealthiest color for planes during daytime, visually obscuring them in an infinite sky as it were. Pink, it turns out, was likely the best color family to draw from. The US did not, to my understanding, go with pink. At night, however, black might not be the best color to use, as the night sky isn’t usually true black. Do you think the Russians are using trial and error or is there some department of the Russian MOD recreating research the US did decades ago and then ignoring the conclusions?
I think it went a bit further than just selecting the right paint.
I remember there was a program to enhance the stealth for relatively low flying surveillance aircraft (still mostly propeller aircraft at that time) and one of the most effective measures was painting the underside of the plane White and then illuminating it on purpose with a light that was matched to the sky. The light was usually bluish to match the sky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehudi_lights
The reason why this was not simply done at night was of course that the surveillance equipment needed some light to work :)
They will be covering them in tyres next.
Interesting question here:
This is obviously worthless against radar detection or thermal vision, but useful against low tech visual shooting (that probably has a very low share of successful interception anyway).
So what’s the actual prevalence in night vision tech? Does (usually digitally based nowadays) low-light amplification make up a big enough share that this is not just another coping mechanism?
This can have a couple of useful effects given the very limited effort it takes to paint them black. Firstly it reduces the value of citizen intelligence that can be gathered during attacks. For example, drones flying to targets deep inside Ukraine will overfly many villages and homes where civilians will note direction and numbers to pass quickly to defence authorities. Black drones in the night sky make this less useful information. Secondly, Ukraine has attempted to increase the number of cheap gun based defence systems so that low and slow drones can be engaged without expensive missile launches. This is often as simple as spotlights and a heavy MG in the back of a truck. Dark paint could reduce the effectiveness of cheap solutions like that and force engagement from more expensive systems.
Obviously it’s pretty hard to say just how useful it will be, but generally reduction in detection increases the chances of slipping through.
Nightvision equipment is very common these days, I would expect a huge number of Ukrainian soldiers have it available at this point. Digital nightvision sucks though and isn’t really used for military applications, it’s still pretty much all analog.
They have night vision and ir clipons which are fucking radical and you aught to hope you’re never on the other side of. Probably not everyone but one or two per squad seems legit.
@Ooops @LaFinlandia The paint will certainly make detection harder. Night vision is impressive, yet still is worse than daylight in every way.
A narrower field of view, loss of colors, need to manually focus, loss of depth perception*, and increased difficulty in using weapons are all downsides. Black paint against a night sky won’t make any of those better.
(*can vary based on the device/number of tubes)
I’m honestly a little surprised that there aren’t like “emp rifles” or something that can’t just handle this.
What a ground breaking innovation they had. Can’t believe it only took this long to think of….camouflage.
I mean sure but on the other hand the Ukrainians have modern radar so this is a bit surprising still.
Ukrainian anti air shot down 74 of the 75 shahed drones launched at Kyiv overnight. Let’s see how spray painting them black goes for them.
