As tension builds between the United States and China, the US Army trains soldiers for jungle warfare at the 25th Infantry Division's Jungle Operations Training Course on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. One of the key components of the 12-day course is learning how to correctly apply natural and artificial camouflage to blend into the environment and avoid detection by the enemy. We asked a JOTC instructor to share the techniques soldiers learn to correctly apply camouflage in a jungle setting.
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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.