00:00 (banging)
00:02 I want all of you to look at this picture,
00:05 just process it.
00:07 What's going on in this picture?
00:08 Somebody raise your hand.
00:09 - They're making the pattern hard to follow.
00:11 - Okay, yup.
00:12 The biggest predator towards the zebras
00:15 has a color deficiency in their eyes.
00:18 So black and white and stripes really messes with their eyes
00:21 so their main defense mechanism of camouflage
00:24 is black and white stripes.
00:25 When their primary predator comes for these animals,
00:27 doesn't know how many of them there are,
00:29 and yet has a hard time determining directions of movement.
00:32 So that's where that comes from.
00:33 (upbeat music)
00:36 - 50% of everything in the jungle is trying to kill you.
00:40 (gunshots)
00:43 Not including the enemy.
00:44 That's what the students here
00:47 at the US Army's Jungle Operations Training Course
00:50 in Hawaii are taught on day one.
00:53 But if the enemy can't see you in the jungle,
00:55 then you may have a better chance of survival.
00:58 (upbeat music)
01:00 That's why these students learn
01:02 how to use camouflage to avoid detection.
01:05 - We are gonna go over a basic level knowledge
01:09 of how to apply and deploy camouflage.
01:12 - As tension between the United States and China builds,
01:16 the Department of Defense is sending more troops
01:18 to the Asia Pacific region.
01:20 So today's class about camouflage is especially relevant
01:26 for Master Sergeant Raymond Sigmund.
01:28 - In the coming months after this course,
01:30 I'll be going to the Philippines for about two months.
01:33 It's awesome that when that announcement came out
01:35 that I get to be part of the one unit to go down there,
01:37 conducting all the training we'll be doing
01:39 in the Philippines and the joint operations
01:42 we'll be doing during that two month period.
01:45 So the jungle specifically,
01:46 without looking at it right now,
01:48 I can tell you there's a pattern trace that it has.
01:51 Is everything grows up.
01:52 So it's in that vertical stance,
01:55 so everything's up and down.
01:56 So you wanna try to avoid making patterns
01:59 that go horizontal across your body if possible.
02:01 Everyone's going to apply face paint
02:04 and then Wes and myself are gonna come around
02:06 and give you tips.
02:08 - We asked a jungle school instructor
02:10 to show us the correct way for soldiers to apply camouflage.
02:14 - Camouflage, we're gonna start with face paint first.
02:16 We're gonna talk about covering your face
02:18 and hands or any kind of exposed skin,
02:20 so your neck as well, behind the ears and behind the neck.
02:23 I like to start with the black or the gray
02:25 to apply a base layer.
02:27 Out here in the jungle with the vegetation we have,
02:30 we found just from lessons learned in Vietnam
02:32 and stuff from our own knowledge, experience,
02:35 going more of a vertical slanted stripe pattern.
02:38 We would call it the blotchy stripe pattern
02:40 is the best for a jungle environment.
02:42 I always wear some type of headgear,
02:44 so a boonie or a PC or a helmet.
02:47 So I do eyebrows and down.
02:49 And if you do, some people that don't wear headgear,
02:51 they do all the way up to their forehead into their hair.
02:54 But if you do put a headgear on
02:56 and you just get face paint all over your boonie,
02:58 which is not something I like to do.
03:00 So I do eyebrows down and then I put my headgear on
03:03 to close off my forehead.
03:04 We're looking for stripes, kind of blotchy stripes.
03:09 So,
03:11 covering all the way down.
03:17 I'm gonna do three or four darker, black or grayish stripes.
03:22 And then I'm gonna fill in the rest of the colors.
03:23 And so it'll kind of come in all together in a second.
03:26 (drumming)
03:28 There.
03:33 (drumming)
03:37 - This doesn't burn your eyes or anything?
03:38 - No, no, you actually want it behind your eyelids.
03:41 So when you do close your eyes,
03:43 your eyelids are not just obviously
03:45 with the color of your skin.
03:47 So they're not fully like horizontal kind of rainbow stripes.
03:51 They are a little blotched
03:54 and they're a little all different directions.
03:56 And also that blends with the vegetation
03:58 'cause we have a lot of vertical vegetation.
04:00 So doing that to your face paint
04:01 is gonna allow you to blend in a little better.
04:02 So that's good base layer.
04:04 Little trick that I have
04:05 with getting face paint off your fingers,
04:07 if you're gonna use the same finger,
04:08 is the inside of your pockets.
04:09 You just rub the inside of your pocket with your face paint.
04:12 It'll get your finger off and clean.
04:13 You can use the next piece.
04:14 The next I'm gonna start with green.
04:15 I'm gonna go a little bit more heavier
04:19 on the green and the brown
04:20 just because that's what our vegetation will reflect.
04:23 So I'm gonna start alternating
04:25 across my black stripes as my base.
04:28 So getting up into the temple and then continuing down.
04:33 (upbeat music)
04:35 (upbeat music)
04:38 And then you wanna get down into your neck.
04:54 And then if you are wearing like one of our OCP tops
04:57 and you opt not to wear the shirt,
04:59 you're gonna go down into your neck as well
05:00 just to get all the exposed skin.
05:02 (upbeat music)
05:05 (upbeat music)
05:08 And then getting your lips is also a big thing as well.
05:19 - Now what if you accidentally get it in your mouth?
05:22 Try to avoid that?
05:23 - Yeah, try to avoid it,
05:24 but it's not gonna hurt you too bad.
05:26 - What does it taste like
05:27 if you have to get it in your mouth?
05:29 - Kind of like any kind of makeup would
05:31 or kind of sunscreen really
05:32 'cause this actually has sunscreen in it.
05:34 All right, one more stripe of green.
05:36 (upbeat music)
05:38 All right, so now I got most of it in.
05:44 I'm gonna finish it up, touch the rest with the brown.
05:46 After I get the brown in there,
05:47 I'm gonna go through and probably reapply
05:49 to my darker black stripes to make them more predominant.
05:54 But I do like to go a bit heavier on the brown
05:56 'cause it definitely helped with our red mud
05:59 that we have out here in Hawaii.
06:02 So you can see the stripes still there,
06:04 but it's more that blotchy pattern
06:06 instead of that predominant, like just main stripe.
06:09 I personally think that having multiple colors
06:16 over your high points,
06:17 it allows it to blend a little bit better
06:18 than just having one solid color to it.
06:20 (upbeat music)
06:30 (upbeat music)
06:32 All right, and then for my ears and my neck
06:41 and the stuff like that, three fingers in all of them,
06:44 you're just gonna kind of cover it all.
06:46 And then back around your neck, same thing.
06:48 Just kind of having those stripes on there,
06:52 but it's just kind of more that blotchy pattern
06:54 that we're looking for.
06:55 This ear too, behind the ear, in the ear,
06:58 and then one from behind the neck, all around.
07:02 And you can expose skin like that.
07:03 And then if I were to not be wearing gloves,
07:06 I would do the same thing with my hands, camo those up.
07:09 But I usually like to wear gloves
07:10 just because keep your hands safe and protected.
07:13 Firstly, I think I'm gonna go back in with my darker color
07:18 and kind of touch up those stripes,
07:20 make them a little bit more predominant,
07:23 just for the appeal.
07:24 (upbeat music)
07:27 And then one more time back in with the green
07:35 just to get it more pop.
07:37 (upbeat music)
07:51 So, and then I would finish the look
07:54 with some kind of headgear
07:56 just to close off any of the white spots that I have.
07:59 (upbeat music)
08:01 So that would be face paint.
08:02 - Cool. - Sick.
08:07 - There you go, there you go.
08:10 - But applying camouflage to your face and skin isn't enough.
08:15 Soldiers must also conceal any equipment
08:18 that could reveal their presence.
08:20 We issue these solid black rifles
08:23 and out here in the jungle,
08:24 that sticks out like a sore thumb.
08:26 We know that there's nothing straight,
08:27 no straight edges in the natural environment
08:30 and there's nothing that's just solid black
08:31 unless you're on a black sand beach.
08:33 So with rifles,
08:34 usually if your units allow it,
08:38 a lot of soldiers will paint their rifles
08:40 the same method that we would either paint our face
08:44 or like I have painted my helmet, same stripes,
08:49 just to break up that actual color.
08:52 This was like a tan,
08:53 but that sticks out like in the jungle like crazy,
08:55 adding the same stripe pattern that we have with our face.
08:58 With the rifle, you can either spray paint it
09:00 or they make this like foam tape
09:05 that you can tape on
09:06 and you can actually wrap your rifle in it
09:11 and camo it up into certain places just like that.
09:18 You can do it all the way down.
09:22 You can do it on the buttstock.
09:25 Obviously you're not gonna be
09:26 probably doing it up on the barrel
09:27 'cause it's gonna get hot when you're firing.
09:29 You're not gonna do it on a muzzle device.
09:30 If I was gonna do this for real,
09:32 I would finish this all the way out.
09:34 I would probably do my pistol grip on my rifle
09:37 and I would do all of my buttstock.
09:38 And then if I had an optic on here,
09:40 I would camo up the optic.
09:42 And I would also, if I had a laser,
09:44 I'd camo the laser as well.
09:45 But this foam tape is super great.
09:48 It sticks on itself.
09:50 It's gonna get this shine away.
09:52 -In the jungle, soldiers also use natural resources
09:58 to complement their artificial camouflage.
10:01 -Rule of thumb, we like to teach our students
10:03 70% natural vegetation or camo and 30% of artificial.
10:07 So your artificial being this foam that we talked about,
10:10 the paint, the face paint, any stuff like that.
10:15 For out here, we like to either put vegetation.
10:22 This is like that elephant grass or any kind of bushes.
10:27 Of the stuff that you're gonna be walking in,
10:29 you're gonna put it in your helmets.
10:32 So, like, through the stuff like that,
10:34 you're gonna have it sticking out,
10:35 have it all layered around so you actually blend
10:38 into the bushes and the material a little bit better.
10:40 You could also put these all across your rucksack.
10:45 A lot of students do that, and they blend in very, very good.
10:47 But you got to be careful because, obviously,
10:50 if I'm walking in an area that has a whole bunch
10:52 of this stuff in it, I'm probably not gonna want
10:54 to put this in there, right, 'cause it's obviously
10:56 gonna counteract what I'm actually trying to do.
10:58 So choosing the right camo or the vegetation
11:00 for the area you're walking in.
11:03 We teach our students as you're moving or patrolling,
11:05 you're grabbing fresh vegetation to put on you.
11:08 If you move to a new area, you take all it off,
11:10 grab new vegetation.
11:11 Or if you're walking for so long in the same kind of area
11:13 and this stuff starts to turn brown,
11:15 and you're still walking into a bunch of lush,
11:17 green, alive vegetation, you're gonna want to change it out
11:20 and put the live stuff in there.
11:21 Doing this and getting rid of the human silhouette
11:27 and the human man-made items on your body
11:29 or whatever you're carrying is gonna allow you
11:31 to blend in a lot better.
11:32 But out here in the jungle with the vegetation,
11:35 blending in is actually super easy
11:37 if you do it the right way, yeah.
11:42 That's all I got in my brain.
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