Night-vision technology forced armies to eliminate black from camouflage patterns

Evidence

Obviously, blending with backgrounds is essential for soldier survival for precisely the same reasons that it is in mice (imagine conducting a night operation wearing white winter camo). In fact, in 2003 the U.S. Army used a process not unlike Kaufman’s experiment with owls to determine the most effective camouflage patterns for our troops. More than a dozen color and pattern types were assessed against urban, desert, and woodland environments, to identify uniforms least likely to stand out. Some of these tests were conducted at night, where they showed—just like Kaufmann—that being too dark on moonlit nights could be deadly. Modern enemy soldiers, it turns out, are a lot like owls. They have phenomenal nighttime vision thanks to the spread of night-vision goggles and other technologies. As a result, black has been eliminated from most camouflage patterns. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 39

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the stated reading purpose on animal-human warfare parallels; also echoes camouflage-evolution claims from other natural-selection treatments.
• SEED: Article angle: how the owl-mouse predation experiment became a template for US military uniform design after night-vision changed the battlefield.