A Stalker Leaf Suit, KMCS 4.0 and an old DPM Jacket walk into a bar.

There’s a power cut. The bartender gets the NVG’s out.

I don’t think I can finish that joke off but hopefully the picture can; in this article I wanted to go over a couple of things that are all too easily missed when we look at making ghillies. Why are we still getting spotted? How can we fix these problems?

In the image above, provided by my man AkaStaten who loves a bit of testing (shame some people don’t), we’ve got three very different ghillie bases. The Stalker works quite well, it does exactly what it’s meant to do and is nearly half the price of the shiny pink plastic one on the right. But what I want to talk about more is the DPM vs the KMCS here as a shining example of why one works, and one clearly doesn’t. I understand that for some guys, it’s all about cosplay and photography which is fine, but this is more for the snipers who want working camouflage.

I’ll come back to night vision shortly. Daytime is king for airsoft snipers. We’ve become very proficient at adding 3D camo to our suits, Haloscreen has been an absolute revelation but still, some people stand out. I’ve talked at length about the flaws in leaf suits but the bigger culprit here is the choice of fabrics. It’s not just limited to leaf suits either – look at all the polyester replica equipment we have in airsoft now. UBACS, softshell jackets, all the “spec ops tactical pants” and Multicam replica plate carriers. Yes, there is higher end stuff out there that does work (Arktis etc) but the majority of airsofters can’t afford that level of gear. The airsoft replica is usually cheap stuff marketed as “water resistant”, “quick drying” or “windproof” and honestly, we don’t need all that as much as we need functional camouflage.

It’s like playing in a carrier bag. High plastic content clothing has an unnatural sheen or shine to it. It doesn’t look natural in the environment no matter how much Haloscreen you add to it. It doesn’t reflect light naturally, and the truth is no matter what pattern is on it, no matter how well you match the colours to the environment, there’s always going to be something a little “off” with it, and that’s what’s going to get you seen regardless of how much work you do to it, which is a kick in the balls if you’ve just spent £200+ on your polythene outfit. It’s a bit like shining light back at the observer, if you want to think of it that way.

Another picture from AkaStaten, and straight away you can see a big difference between the shiny KMCS and a cheap bit of DPM. The DPM isn’t reflecting light, it’s matte, and maintains strong colours and a good contrast, which is why I like it so much despite it probably seeming a bit old fashioned. The leaf suit has no contrast, no discernable pattern, and will blob into one mass of colour even just at another ten metres of range. The shine on that polyester is horrific. Even laid here on the floor, you can see it isn’t doing much to break up shape either, only blurring the outline with a few ragged bits of plastic leaf which is added to the main mass of colour, and that’s not breakup.

Snake the Sniper once said that “it’s better to look like nothing, than something”. Using low reflectance fabrics is a huge part of that. We want to look dull and avoid catching the eye, and it’s not just about the colours. I could almost make a case for not bothering with a ghillie at all and instead wearing just BDU’s and understanding how to move and use cover correctly; movement is still the biggest giveaway but even stationary a poor ghillie base is still going to make you stand out. I know that would probably hit a few airsoft kit makers in the pocket but that’s the truth. This is why although you think you’ve covered yourself in enough natural veg or 3D elements, you’re still visible. Whereas a good base can work without any 3D at all, and there’s proof of that out there if you can see past all the smoke and mirrors/ads.

As much as we might think otherwise, we’re not as good as armed forces are in developing camouflage. The beauty of it is, to the airsofter, that they’ve done all the hard work for us in developing the clothing and the pattern working with budgets that dwarf any amount of ad revenue, years of field testing and research, and it’s available to us for very little. Surplus is cheap but of course it works much better than the stuff airsoft YouTubers try to throw together. To go back to that picture at the top;

Look at how effective that £10 DPM jacket is in the middle. Note as well that it’s maintaining the pattern which breaks up the shape, where the Stalker loses that at night with a micro pattern, and the KMCS is just luminous. Carrying the shape breakup over into the night is a huge plus. But, this budget DPM stuff is designed by the professionals. It’s the same with US Woodland, French CCE, German Flecktarn, or whatever you have locally.

I know only a few airsofters play out at night, although from a recent milsim, I can tell you that there’s a much greater need for IRR fabrics because there are a lot more players than you think equipped with NVG’s. I know there’s an argument of “Well, I only play during the day so I don’t need to worry about that”, but if you’re going to build a ghillie one way or another, why not just add that functionality in anyway? If the £10 jacket can hide you from that, why would you not use it? Why spend an extra £200+? Why on the forums and social media do we have this tug of war between groups of fanboys when there’s already a much better solution available?. If you do want to splash out, go and grab a MIM-TECH (link here) and get something designed to work properly. Otherwise, your boring old BDU’s might just surprise you.

Big thanks to AkaStaten for all the photos, check out his other work here.