- Reaction score
- 6
- Points
- 430
I never thought about it before, because I never cared enough to think about it, but a recent post, regarding CIC officers getting issued CadPat, made me stop and think about it for a moment.
In anycase, somthing about CadPat quickly struck me, and I‘ve decided to dissolve some nonsense.
There is no special chemical treatment, or any sort of special thread in the uniforms that absorbs infrared light. Indeed, any after-market items you buy made in an actual CadPat pattern, or even in knock-off CadPat, assuming it uses close to the same colours, will have just as much infrared absorbing properties.
As most of us know, CadPat is digitally generated. They basically took a camera, and drove along in a variety of enviroments, and took a few of the most common colours, and put them in a digitally generated pattern.
That being said, you‘ll find that black very seldom appears in nature, yet appears very regularly in the CadPat field hat sitting on top of the speaker in front of me.
Why you ask? Excellent question.
You can‘t see black. Rather you see an absence of light. Pure black reflects absolutely no light. It‘s very hard however to make perfectly black black, but "almost black" reflects very little light.
Infrared light is not visible to the naked eye, infrared viewing devices convert it to visible light. Essentially, with your naked eye, an area can appear to be very dark, but it could potentially be flooded with infrared light.
Infrared light also reflects differently then regular light.
Black however is also effective at absorbing infrared light. As such, the patches of black in the CadPat break up a sillhouette, even when viewed through infrared viewing devices.
You‘ll also note the appearence of black on the british Soldier 95 pattern, also added to disrupt infrared.
So there we go. Myth dispelled.
In anycase, somthing about CadPat quickly struck me, and I‘ve decided to dissolve some nonsense.
There is no special chemical treatment, or any sort of special thread in the uniforms that absorbs infrared light. Indeed, any after-market items you buy made in an actual CadPat pattern, or even in knock-off CadPat, assuming it uses close to the same colours, will have just as much infrared absorbing properties.
As most of us know, CadPat is digitally generated. They basically took a camera, and drove along in a variety of enviroments, and took a few of the most common colours, and put them in a digitally generated pattern.
That being said, you‘ll find that black very seldom appears in nature, yet appears very regularly in the CadPat field hat sitting on top of the speaker in front of me.
Why you ask? Excellent question.
You can‘t see black. Rather you see an absence of light. Pure black reflects absolutely no light. It‘s very hard however to make perfectly black black, but "almost black" reflects very little light.
Infrared light is not visible to the naked eye, infrared viewing devices convert it to visible light. Essentially, with your naked eye, an area can appear to be very dark, but it could potentially be flooded with infrared light.
Infrared light also reflects differently then regular light.
Black however is also effective at absorbing infrared light. As such, the patches of black in the CadPat break up a sillhouette, even when viewed through infrared viewing devices.
You‘ll also note the appearence of black on the british Soldier 95 pattern, also added to disrupt infrared.
So there we go. Myth dispelled.