Camouflaging vessels at sea is notoriously difficult. Attempts at full concealment have proved fruitless. But old-fashioned techniques may have new benefits in an age of AI and drones
, a Russian warship, was spotted in Sevastopol, a Crimean port on the Black Sea, sporting a striking new paint job. Its bow and stern were black and the midsection white, ensuring that, from a distance, the ship looked smaller than it really was. According to H.I. Sutton, an independent defence analyst, three other Russian ships in the Black Sea Fleet have been similarly redecorated. Why?
Camouflaging vessels at sea is notoriously difficult. Attempts at full concealment have proved fruitless; at best, ships can be made slightly harder to make out at long range. But during the first world war Britain and America began to deployto help protect their boats. Rather than hiding their ships, they aimed to confuse the enemy.
Norman Wilkinson, a British artist, developed so-called “dazzle” camouflage, the most widely adopted scheme. He suggested painting ships with intersecting geometric shapes in bold contrasting colours. When viewed through a periscope—at the time, submarines were the biggest threat to warships—Wilkinson’s irregular pattern broke up the outline of the vessel, making it harder for the enemy to judge its shape and direction of travel.
The second world war saw the introduction of other paint schemes. These included the American Navy’s “Measure 32”, which, as with the, used patches of light and dark to make it hard to tell a ship’s true size, especially in poor visibility. The goal was to make it hard to distinguish aircraft-carriers, battleships and other high-value targets from cruisers and smaller vessels.
Naval camouflage largely died out after the war. Radar superseded visual observation, and submarines used sonar to detect their targets. But recent developments have seen a revival in visual-deception techniques. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022 Ukraine has attacked its vessels in the Black Sea with uncrewed surface vessels (
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