Hiding in Plain Sight: Blending Comms into the Background

Camouflaging Signals in a Transparent Battlefield

Years ago, before the US military became overly focused on counterinsurgency operations and overly reliant on forward operating bases (FOBs) and large, loud, mine-resistant armor-protected vehicles (MRAPs), the military focused certain fundamentals.

Two of those fundamentals included the practice of camouflage and communications discipline.

As a young cadet and officer, I was instructed that “camouflage is continuous,” which meant that the camouflage applied to an individual, vehicle, command post or anything else, had to match the background. As a platoon leader on my second deployment, I felt ridiculous wearing a universal combat patterned uniform, a desert combat pattern vest and helmet, and forest patterned equipment. My camouflage wasn’t continuous and so I stuck out like a sore thumb.

My camouflage clearly was not continuous on this deployment

On that deployment, I also noticed that we had abandoned the radio discipline once ingrained. We stopped using frequency hopping (FH) tech…