How to Hide From Drones: Lessons Learned in Modern War 

Remember there is no "universal" camouflage. Terrain matters as does time of year. Use of tarps can be improved by creating ragged, irregular edges. Reversible camo wear with 2 different patterns can be handy. Using natural materials means using grass in grasslands but get leaves once in woods. Very easy to forget. Lastly moving using terrain means never walk on ridge tops and avoiding open areas whenever possible. All those terms are actually important to remember and analyze with each element in mind: line/shape/color/value (dark-light)/texture/shine or light absorbancy/edges. You can be perfectly camouflaged but if your tracks are obvious you're done. Be aware of the trail you leave behind. One final tip: creating a false target by making obvious trails leading to a poorly camouflaged site showing some gear and dummy body can also draw attention away from you. Sorry to lecture but I assure everything listed is critical.

Flew Cessna Skymasters in Angola. Enemy used large banana leaves to cover themselves from our FLIR. It worked.

Having served in the army I can attest that most units will leave their camo netting packed up out of sheer laziness. The artillery unit I served with set the standard for putting up the camouflage nets within minutes of setting up, but we had to kick some butts to make sure it happened every time.

Your statement "Be harder to kill than the next guy" really was light bulb moment for me . Up until now I have had a attitude that you can't hide from the best technology , but now I am thinking that the harder you are to find the more closely "they" have to look and the less area you can cover in the same amount of time . So it does make sense to do something even if it's not perfect.

On civilian vehicles: I had the good fortune to observe the Jordanian Air Force camouflage all their shiny colorful fire trucks. They just pulled one truck off the road and created a huge mud hole. Troops got busy getting their trucks as filthy as possible. Clean a tiny spot for the driver to see, park it in the sun to dry and voila! Perfect color match to the terrain. It worked extremely well.

Served for 22 years in the military; armor & mech infantry (72-94). Your discussions of threat and the critical use of camouflage jumped off the screen for me! Extremely relevant. Further, it provided a somewhat current sense of the state-of-the-art for surveillance in our communities in this worsening big brother environment. Be invisible. That was always true. More importantly, follow the laws of God.

As a Vietnam/Cambodia combat vet, I've had great teachers. The NVA (North Vietnamese Army). They were excellent . One learned real quick what to look for, or one died. That simple.

As an American civilian without a military background, I find the information very interesting. Thank you

When 2nd Iraq war started, I told everyone that the technologies used in this war will be used against us in the next dacade.

One thing that wasn't mentioned. If you've had to use your weapon cover it quickly or that gun will show up quickly with a tell,tell white signature. So you may be in a ghille suit so pull your weapon under you or wrap it with no part exposed. Even when you can't see the drone it can be high up. Don't take a chance.

I fly Drones for the Dod / Army in an OPFOR role. A visual sensor UAS is not super difficult to hide from, a low resolution thermal sensor is also not that difficult to hide from if you have adequate concealment (IE a tree top canopy that is holding heat from the sun, especially during the day, but even at night time, the canopy holds heat pretty well).. the issue is when you get into hiding from systems that have more advanced thermal signature capabilities, like a 640 resolution thermal sensor.. there's not a whole lot you can do to hide from these.. But you CAN evade them with the right environment and gear. Things like cold weather insulating clothing tends to help quite a bit against letting heat out, as well as the new thermal resistant poncho's that the Army is coming out with... Thermal reflective emergency blankets can work in a pinch provided that you don't leave them against your body for too long, your heat will eventually transfer over to it and cause you to show up as well. "tarping" a couple ponchos between trees and hiding behind them is a good way to avoid detection, or if you're in a Desert setting, laying down next to large rocks that have been absorbing the desert sun all day will make a huge difference in concealing your signature.

Geoint guy who recently left the community for the private sector. Thank you. Was just having a decision on this and my customer couldn't grasp these basics

Judging from the title we are all now on a list

It's funny you mention the "deployment" to Poland as an example of training to fight near-peers. I'm here right now and we did all the hooplah: the gunneries, the months in the field, the multinational combined arms exercises... And every scenario has been briefed with enemies somehow in possession of tanks and LAVs, but without nightvision or thermal capability. And when I brought this up at the division AAR (why aren't we training in scenarios based on reality, so we can develop TTPs for EMCON, using proper camouflage, anti-thermal and anti-NOD techniques, etc.) and they shut me down, booed me for thinking. The military, Army especially, is gonna learn these TTPs the hard way in the coming years unless "leaders" can pull their heads out their asses. Thanks for existing. I use your videos and outlines to train my men to think beyond the doctrine and their limited experience and limited training opportunities.

Small UAV's are very comparable to a trained observer's eyes (with appropriate sensing, such as night or thermal vision). Keep that in mind. They are far more 'obvious' than a trained observer (that WILL use high level camouflage to maintain peak avoidance). Keep THAT in mind. If you KNOW you are being scouted from a fixed position, but you don't know where that position is, it is FAR MORE TACTICALLY VALUABLE to find and take-out the enemy scout, than to wait and engage what 'is coming' from such scouting (such as artillery or mortars). UAV's make this job INFINITELY EASIER! You see a drone, you SHOOT the drone! Take the drone out, abandon a few 'obvious targets' at that location (cars, backpacks, water cans, etc.), and take an ambush position nearby (ideally, before another drone is launched, which will scout why the first was shot down). Small UAVs are a forward-forward scout system...to know where the large UAVs need to work (such as Predators)...so keeping the small ones 'out of the picture' keeps the larger ones from being deployed, to start with. In 1991, during Desert Storm, I know of one Marine unit that after being misidentified as 'enemy' by a circling large UAV, the unit commander ordered the .50 gunner to 'take that drone out'...and he did. The Air Force lost their minds, but it stopped the bombardment (as I remember, it was artillery)...they were getting 'fire correction' from the drone (friendly fire, no less). Destroy the drone, immediately move out of the grid to an 'observation point', turn it into an ambush for troops or a 2nd wave air survey...

Drones have made privacy a thing of the past and life really worrisome.

Knowing what your up against is huge. Aside from some military folks, the people I've come in contact with that are most familiar with concealment are weed growers. In talking with a few different grow op managers they would absolutely be the people to put up effective concealment. In observing LE attempts to surveil the ops I was pretty impressed with the thought that some of the growers put into how they configured their grows to control what is shown and what is concealed.

As a biologist, I can tell you that many many other animals use camouflage, some blending into their natural environment and other having the colorations of a deadly animal despite being a non-deadly species. I'd venture that camouflage has existed since before humans did. No wonder it's so useful.

Was a recce soldier decades ago, setting OPs was my specialty and of all the rules you set out I’d say #8 is the most crucial and least observed. Too often people will do a quick camo job and assume they’re invisible only to be ambushed because despite what they thought, they were easily spotted, most likely due to something appearing unnatural from a distance such as a tree’s leaves facing the wrong way and reflecting sunlight or a bush or blades of grass leaning the wrong way. Usually, it’s something you can’t spot from within a dozen feet or less but from 100 yards it quickly becomes obvious.

Thanks

Have to point this out: @6:00 this screenshot isn't depicting camouflage. It's depicting a deception scheme. What they're working on is a wooden mockup of an airplane. (tail section to the bottom right of the screen, nose to top left, wings left and right, etc.). It's _meant_ to be seen.

Was in the Army as a 13 F in Iraq back in 2009-2010. Worked in a TOC and watched screens of Predators and other Drones. Saw several IED emplacers and even firefights. The use one thing I noticed with the blackhot and white-hot cameras at night was if the the guys that ran away jumped in the water it became very difficult to follow them until they got out of the water. Just a heads up from my experience.

Showed up on RU-vid homepage, it's reassuring to know I'm likely part of a "Dissent" watchlist. Hello fellow students of history.

Vehicles are bullet magnets. When my National Guard unit deployed to the Middle East in 2004 I objected to "stay in the vehicle" and "park in the road." History demonstrated that staying on roads and hiding in "armored vehicles" such as the old half-track and the M113 wasn't a very good idea even against guerrillas with "only" small arms.

Can't thank you enough for making yourself available to the average Joe. Never learned so much in 30 odd minutes.

Chuck a tarp over, then some dirt/leaves off the ground over that. It'll insulate and camouflage. A couple layers of tarp/leaves/tarp/leaves with dirt on top are amazing insulation for cold nights too.

Great stuff. You did a good job of starting the conversation on Camo. I want to especially thank you for pointing out the tracks or wheel marks on the terrain. another easy way to find positions is that people run their vehicles to stay warm, which heats up the vegetation. Also, at night, one can follow the heat signature of wheels and/or tracks upon roads for several hours so selecting one’s night position well in advance of sundown is moi important.

That's the thing we need to admit, we do not own the night anymore...The Taliban always had a few as the war went on,they had 100s if not 1,000s, and I think we left cases of them in Afghanistan.

Consequently, recent reports/videos of birds attacking and shutting down drone activity are quite refreshing.

We were taught to allways hide the tracks going off-road to forest where the vehicle is hidden. While we most often slacked doing this in an exercise if the war comes I guess I'll have to get the crew know that this is really really important

Just found this channel. Awesome content!! As a Veteran of the Marine Corps it's good to see that the USMC is changing, once again, how things are done. Semper Fi

Khaki uniforms were introduced by Sir Harry Burnett Lumsden and William Stephen Raikes Hodson in 1848 for British colonial troops in India and were found to be especially effective for field service and battle. (Source WikiPedia). Modern Camouflage became a thing during the Boer war after the British army finally realised that marching around a battlescape in their bright red coats was a very bad idea.They finally moved to using Khaki uniforms designed to blend in with the landscape to avoid being picked off at range by angry Boers hiding in the South African Veldt.

Yes proper camo will make you invisible! We grunts always covered up our foot traffic and used local vegetation on our existing camo for cover concealment. The whole concept is blend into your background and now you need to make yourself invisible from the eye in the sky 🎯

I'm so glad my dad taught me to hunt, how to trap, how to stalk game, how to observe to detect game, how to think like a predator, how to make temporary shelter that will allow you to survive in any weather in case you get caught out in the wilderness overnight, and most importantly, how to not be seen in the wilderness by critters with senses advanced well beyond human abilities. All the camouflage in the world won't save you if you don't know these things. Master these skills and you're a ghost. Mylar blankets are a must for several reasons.

Well the Tabain have some nice, state of the art ones now.

I would not give out tradecraft, but one way to hide from Thermal and is abundant and cheap is a Mylar blanket. There are a few more I can give out. That is not tradecraft, or NDA. I’ll see what S2 puts out there I truly enjoy this line of work and way of living. Thank you all for your feedback and time.

During our conflict in Angola, we (SADF) lacked air superiority, thus dispersion and camouflage were paramount. Those lessons were pressed home, along with light security etc.

Intensely interesting. Avoiding observation while mounting a tactical operation is something old Geronimo and his Apaches were adept in. His tactics are still taught and i see some of them here. Now you need eyes on top of your head too. I had long thought of these little drones as a perfect reconnoitering tool.

For all us regular civilian jerks: remember that NVG's DO NOT make you invisible. Its not a cloaking device.

One thing I always find interesting when talking about personal camouflage, is that people often overlook hunting camo. Hunting camo can be specifically designed for certain areas and if you're getting camo for your home turf, hunting camo for that area can be miles better than some military camo. Some of my coyote hunting camo can make me disappear in the dry grassland, as it was specifically designed for that exact terrain.

When you can drive an M-88 tow tank or 5 ton wrecker under your camo net, then you have set your camo equipment up properly. I ended up teaching many fellow soldiers the simple technique of using poles and paddles to support nets properly. Some guys just didn't have enough IQ points. Those are the ones to avoid until they self destruct.

Not sure which is more disturbing. The fact that this just popped up on my feed or that I clicked on it.

Good presentation, found you be accident on you tube. Shape shine silhouette movement, the basics we were taught in the 1070/80s back in the cold war to avoid overhead detection from reconnaissance aircraft , I have seen in all NATO forces in action maybe since the turn of the century a loss of some of the basics we were previously taught and took for granted maybe from the 1950,s onwards reaching a peak at the end of last century. Even counter insurgency was handled differently/better last century too there has become way to much reliance on technology and far less encouragement of common sense and what was previously learned by the losses in life to get this knowledge in the 1st place... I know its not just me because I have talked to former colleagues who watch the news and see videos from war zones etc, if there is one thing we have access to its video footage and we observe very many basic errors in tactics in this current armed forces in the west in general. Where did all thoughs skill sets go we were taught in basic training? All vehicles in my time had camo nets on them and these were deployed as SOP when stopped, grunts always had clothing camo brush and the like attached, including helmet cam, dispersion of ground forces was a given too. I saw Reccy pictures from Jaguar aircraft in the 1980,s of deployed armoured units and all of these picture taught us how to mitigate observation from above and it was a common place thing to be aware of observation from above, I can not believe people in this day and age are not more aware of UAV observation but there you go. Good heads up video all the best.

Oh boy, now I gotta rewatch all the footage from Nagorno-Karabakh and spot the mistakes that were made

Superb video: well executed, easy to follow with practical solutions, concise and thorough treatment of each aspect. This treatment rendered the solutions actionable without being overwhelming to the viewer. The narrator also treats possibly politically inflammatory situations in a professional, tactful manner, quickly avoiding ideological pitfalls while cutting directly to the tactical (and more important) aspects. Also, as a former Marine and 2x Iraqi War veteran, my heart swells with pride and warmth hearing the strides my beloved Corps is taking to constantly improve, evolve and remain masters of the craft of war while making said practice real-world, easily actionable and memorable to its warfighters. Despite my aforementioned feelings, I am not surprised at the Corps' disposition or advances, since it and its members have a long tradition of preparation, tactical innovation and love for the craft and art of war. Thank you to the video's author and the excellence he and the Marine Corps exhibit.

I remember the Mythbusters where they were testing different ways to hide from thermal. They found glass completely masks thermal signature, but it's totally impractical. One - carrying around a big pane of glass and 2 the pane itself would show up as a big thermal neutral square lol 😆

Hey just checking in 10 months after the original post. CIA and American intelligence last air strike in Afghanistan completely missed the target and killed 7 to 10 children. Cheers

"Dirt has been brown for 100 years" lol.

"Invisibility is just a matter of stealth and patience"~Raz A Gul "Outsmart the Po Po's!"~E 40

Ima have to watch this multiple times

Flew DUSTOFF in Iraq/Syria 16/17. Flew 3 different Missions where ISIS killed/injured personnel with drones carrying/dropping explosives or being laden with explosives and kamikaze it or crash land, wait for someone to come investigate then detonate the explosive. Switched over to Apaches that use a powerful FLIR. Taliban, etc used thick blankets/rugs but you can still see heat signatures around them. Thermal crossover is the Achilles heel.

Maybe because the latest Project Veritas whistleblower video was an FDA guy who suggested they use "drones with blow darts" to jab the unjabbed. Seriously.

Cellphones are always talking even when turned off; remove the battery or put in a faraday bag to block its signal.

When everyone has a drone with their name on it. Whoever controls the drones controls you. These drones will be easily used as a civilized social surgery.

In Koevoet, we wanted to be ambushed. That's when we knew where the enemy was, and we could then attack 😊 We would often send one vehicle out on its own, to get ambushed 😂 Worked very well. 8mm Armour works well if you need to travel at 80km in rough terrain

I played this capture the falg type game once and knowing how to camouflage myself helped a bit, had a large group of people on a long dirt road, half were guards and had flashlights, the other half had to make it down the road and grab the flag in the middle of a field without being seen. Super fun, would do again.

In 2012 when I was stationed at Ft. Benning, I was assigned to a Civilian Group called ThreatTec, that actually helped develop the Army's doctrine for drone detection and concealment. We played OpFor (Opposing Force) that tried different ways of avoiding the drones used by an Active Duty unit. It was interesting to say the least........

"ImporDEnt"😂 makes me chuckel every time. Re camo all green light dark, all brown light dark, or white grey. Keep up the good content.

Funny, I was in that Battalion for that exercise. Well done. We have a manual on camouflage from air observation. Its became important again. Its been forgotten in the war on terror.

In the 1980's we put a carbine on a RC helicopter on a farm. It amazes me it's taken the government this bloody long to catch up. They need to employ us nerds! Edit: Also the only chad camouflage is Dazzle. :P

I was field artillary in the Army and Marine Corps, and everytime we would set up the firing battery as soon as we pulled in we would immediately set up camflage netting over all the entire battery and the XO post.

I'm thinking about taking a mylar survival blanket and cutting holes shaped like rabbits to allow excess heat to escape. That way, when the drone flys over me and looks down, it will look like rabbits having a family reunion.

“IR is easy to fool”, then says nothing about fooling IR. Awesome dude 👏

I use cold mud to hide from heat and thermo. Learned this trick back in the 80s way before drones were even a thing.

Awesome stuff!! Would have loved working with you, back in the day. And the biggest problem with those dismounts is... The fact that they're on the road to begin with! Our military is too road-bound, and always has been. Just to refine what you're talking about, as you stated yourself, none of this is anything new. The best Army manual on the subject is still 5-20 "Camouflage" from 1969. BTW, in Jim Rawles' "Patriots," the bible of modern survivalism, the characters in his instruction manual-dressed-as fiction had their bugout vehicles painted in solid earth-tones with flattener added. Also at one point in the book, when the main characters went on an interstate rescue mission, they slept well away from their vehicles which, in addition were parked tactically and camouflaged. Also, my favorite tarps for camouflage are the ones sold by Bi-Mart. They're brown on one side and OD Green on the other. Not the toughest tarps, but they've improved quite a bit over the years. Maaco, in their line of Sherwin-Williams paints has an entire line of earth tone colors and can add flattener. An excellent, universal dark coyote earth tone (a real Marine color, lol) is Maaco paint # 47087 w/flattener added. P.S: I just learned that some LINE-X certified shops (I.e., my local one) can do different colors, even though they don't advertise it!!! Get your post-collapse vehicle painted with this, rather than regular paint!!! They informed me that they can't do perfect color-matching, but who cares!! LINE-X has a no-questions-asked lifetime guarantee, for starters... - CPT (O-3E), USAR, RET

Gold

This needs an update; the past 2 years have yielded so much more footage

My squad started using cloth bug window screens that we painted and used as personal veils those worked great

Jeez, This is when you're a 96B for life!!!!!!!

Just ordered a ghillie suit, camo netting, and night vision goggles! Thanks brother! Glory be to God!

Good stuff. It's always nice to refresh on old lessons and pick up a couple new too.

The reason they disperse during attacks or firefights is to make it harder on the attackers being fired on from different locations also so one soldier can get the attention of one attacker while a sniper takes him out. And alot of the time it's snipers that take save the most loves in war

It's a great blessing to be able to get the right advice on these things. And it's just really interesting. Thank you so much.

No matter how "cool" something is, if it's not practical, doesn't work, not needed... (: reconsider ;)!

This video sooo needs a revisit.

Intel reports & AAR circulars from WWII are still a gold mine of applicable info even 75+ years on. I knew a WWII vet who fought in the Normandy hedgerows and he said that you would never move through an open field if you could avoid doing so. You hewed close to the hedges surrounding the fields and cammied your helmet. My grandfather was in Merrill's Marauders in Burma and they did a lot of their movement at night and heavily utilized camouflage.

Theres already personal directed Emp tools out there to take drones down. That's going to be the future of UAS defense. Flood the skies with EM energy at regular intervals.

Still think 1970s era AAA would erase the drone issue entirely. Seems like a really dumb problem: like land mines... Don't drive on the clearly marked paths. Don't move in predictable patterns. Landmines can't get up and chase you down like a guided missile. If a mine can get you, so can literally any other weapon. At this point we're just talking about ambush tactics and how to avoid them. Likewise, these slow moving, low flying, fragile aircraft, can be knocked out with very low caliber weapons. All you really need is a search and track radar to sniff them out. Such technology has existed since the second world war. But more importantly, man-portable track and search systems have been around since the middle of the cold war, with vehicle mounted variants being able to shoot down fighter jets at speeds and ranges far beyond the capability of nearly all drones. You'd have to field something like the X47 to beat a plain old manpad. But even manpads are a bit overkill for a $100 plastic drone. A Zu-23 with a rudimentary targeting computer/radar could clear the skies of any size drone for miles. And they are dual use weapons. If you want to spend the money, a point defense system will automate the process, as well as deal with any SEAD that comes your way as a result of your active radar. Nothing about the "drone age" is new or exciting. This shit is like 3D printing: A new way to use plastic. Its not gunna change the world. We've already delt with similar technology in the past.

It seems like you could hide your radio frequency signature by hiding transmitters that come on intermittently across the landscape. Or at least present the impression of a force large enough it should be avoided. I have never heard of this being done but I have heard of troops in olden times lighting multiple camp fires per soldier to appear much more formidable.

the problem with dispersion is that it severely hampers communication, element cohesion, and your overall effectiveness in a fight. if you have one guy spread out every 100 meters, you're basically just by yourself, and any force that attacks your position would have local superiority. There has to be a better option than to simply scatter to the wind, as that is not a realistic answer to the threat.

Please tell me again why I need to camouflage myself stateside? I would just look homeless. Hide in plain sight. push a shopping cart, yell at cars, poop on the street. now I’m invisible.

That image of them "camouflaging" a plane was ridiculous. It's CLEARLY a plane! LOL!!

Very well presented professionally & articulated!!!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

In Florida nothing beats half faded m81 woodland

I grew up in the desert and had a tan coat and used the old Apache trick of balling up with my blue jeaned legs tucked under me. Saved me several times when I had been out partying and my car died from running out of gas etc. I cop would go driving by and it would give me enough time to get out in the bushes and hide if I had beer on my breath. Guys who tried to lay flat on the ground between the bushes always got caught and I never did.

Dont forget kids. When you want to practice airsoft, camouflage yourself as old woman and your rifle as a broom.

Midwest, Michigan for me, Tigerstripe works wonders. I think in any Midwest wooded environment, along with M81, Tigerstripe will be near the top in effectiveness, due to the branches and shadowing found in heavily wooded environments. Not to shabby in tall grass either.

11 months have passed since you made this video and now drones are able to transmit in real-time even the hobbyist kinds by next year they will be fitted with FLIR and most likely be able to do things like run in packs without any input from the operator and be able to lock onto a target and direct a weapon to that target , then return back to where they started or to another location, they will probably be able to stay aloft longer and travel further while at the same time be smaller

You sound tired dude. THANKS for the content.

Another way to view evading this matter is comparing it to evading scent tracking dogs. The trick is not to fool the dogs but to fool the handlers. A lot of criss-cross tracks have the dog basically going back and forth over an area so the handler thinks the dog has lost the scent, and they move away. Cretae a visual (hidden things and visible things) that confuse the drone operator.

actually its not a bad idea to have your own surveillance drone to test out your own camouflage techniques while setting up camp

" Dirt isn't purple you know it's brown it's been brown for a hundred years" May I quote you on this? I'm writing a book and I'd love to use that line. I will give you full credit for it. Thank you.

This needs more views .

If Camouflage is primarily about blending in with your environment then walking around in MIL survivalist gear does the opposite. You know who you are. Great channel btw.

Something I learned recently is that the eagle is a symbol of war and if you see a double headed eagle looking in opposite directions it means the figure is aware of everything going on around it.

This hiding from drones plan is not the correct solution. The correct solution would be electronic warfare upon the drones themselves. Just like the electronic warfare used buy the most sophisticated fighter jets.

I have been instituting some of the techniques you describe in the video, but I think I am drawing some unwanted attention every time I camouflage my truck before I go into walmart

You're never going to get away with a video on jamming, but that's the easiest workaround.

Amen Brother🙏🏻. Thank you for making me remember what I learned in the military. And use it in my Civilian life. 👍🏻👍🏻🇺🇸

Remember, if your NCO can find you so can the enemy.