Why British DPM camouflage remains one of the best camouflage choices on the market, despite being retired by the UK armed forces. As an Airsoft sniper, I don’t need to match my teammates’ patterns or pull off a particular historical look. The only thing I need to worry about is being effective, so I can choose whatever I want. And there’s a vast choice of military, hunting and civilian camouflages available now.

But Airsoft has many challenges when it comes to staying stealthy. We have to move more than hunters, be effective at closer ranges than the military, and switch between different terrains, ideally without getting changed or adjusting camouflage because of time constraint – most games only last an hour.

Looking past all the novelty leaf suits, there are some exceptional base camouflages on the market now with some seriously impressive colours and patterns that do an amazing job, but the problem is that they do an amazing job only in the very specific environment they were designed for. For example,

– Grassland

– Pine forest

– Oak forest

– Birch woodland

– Sand

– Rock

– Dead vegetation

And again the different seasons in each environment. I can think of a couple of local sites, without too much trouble, that encompass three or four of those environments. Sure, I could make and carry 6-10 ghillies everywhere with me, but it’s just not practical. As a player who travels around a lot to different sites, I don’t know exactly what to expect at each site; what the terrain will be like, what the weather and lighting conditions will be like, what different plants are present etc. The challenge is to create a ghillie that will work fairly well in most conditions, rather than one that works very well but only in a corner of the car park in late afternoon.

Obviously, looking like a 6’4″ pile of dead plastic leaves is a no go. Multicam seems versatile, but is bright white almost in 90% of woodland settings. There are 8 versions of the very impressive Pencott pattern, which is perfect when matched to an environment but no good if I’m playing in pine forest in Scotland on a Saturday and then driving down to an oak forest in England for the Sunday game. Even MTP, developed from Multicam as a multi terrain pattern, was described by the military as “not quite perfect, but good enough for everything” although MTP was designed and developed in Cyprus and Afghanistan, not northern Europe.

Clearly, the most balanced option for a multitude of environments in this part of the world is going to be a balanced, simple pattern that can cope with both green and brown environments. I’m a big fan of high contrast patterns to aid shape breakup, and there are a few old school 4-colour patterns out there still (Green, brown, tan, black).

My big love in the last year or two for Airsoft has been US Woodland pattern;

It looks cool, and I’ve been collecting some US loadouts for themed games. But as a sniper…that dark green just doesn’t seem to match anything we have in the UK. It suits pine foliage better.

However, there’s a much better alternative – the humble old British DPM pattern. The preserve of bargain bins at the local surplus store, old rags often worn for gardening, cheap coveralls dished out to rental players in the old days and rarely seen now in the high fashion environment that is the Airsoft skirmish field. I see more lumberjack shirts these days sadly. And lumberjack shirts are definitely not a good look.

But, the green works much better here in the UK than that of US Woodland (please stop calling it M81) and French CCE, which you might think is obvious given its origins but DPM pattern has been used across the world in conflicts since the end of World War 2, and continues to be used. From Northern Ireland to the Falklands, Kosovo to Sierra Leone, DPM has been effective in a range of terrains and used by about 50 countries.

Today I decided to put a pair of 95 pattern DPM trousers on, and go for a walk around my local area to get a few photos. It’s mainly mixed deciduous woodland, early June in the UK so there’s a lot of greenery but the weather is still cold, wet, warm, sunny and everything in between. I haven’t attacked these with spray paint or dye, and there’s no 3D or anything attached. They’re fresh from stores.

It was a bit difficult trying to take selfies, so I just dropped my trousers off while nobody was around and laid them out in different places. In these first two pictures you can see how well it breaks up the shape by using clean, sharp lines instead of digitally blended shapes. The high contrast between the tan, green, brown and the minority black on the pattern makes it very difficult to work out what you’re looking at. And that mid shade of green is similar to all the summer growth present (I’m not a botanist; I have no idea what any of these plants are or whether I should have eaten any). The brown isn’t a perfect match to the soil but it’s not bad, and the tan underneath is a good size to match the dead leaves and litter you see in the photos.

The trousers are cotton, avoiding the weird polyester sheen we get on all our modern stuff and the matte effect doesn’t reflect any light and draw the eye to something artificial.

Even standing up, it doesn’t do a bad job against the trees. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t something you look at and think “wow, that’s practically invisible” like some of the carefully staged or photoshopped camouflage adverts. Not quite perfect, but good enough in the greener months. I have thousands of photos from Airsoft sites all year round and across the UK, and even in winter months greenery persists in many places.

These photos of course are taken at very close range, partly because I didn’t want to stray too far without any trousers on in case a dog walker came past. And I’ve told you what’s there to look for so you’ll pick it up quite easily, but it’s still well camouflaged. But if a player just happened to stroll past without knowing you’re there (stay still, stay quiet, pick a good spot), they wouldn’t pick you out. And that’s before we start adding magic Haloscreen, cottons, coconut rope and raffia to it to really start enhancing the camouflage.

In terms of the kit choices, instead of simply having baggy mesh trousers/baggy mesh hoody with no padding or pockets/balaclava available and maybe two pouch options in development, this is surplus and in the UK, there’s tons of it. Smocks, shirts, waterproofs, loads of webbing options, bashas, sleeping bags, backpacks, gloves, hats, scarves, sleeping mats, gaiters, bivi bags and bandanas. You can get everything you could possibly need in the same pattern, and it’ll usually cost you less than a bag of bb’s. It’s harder wearing than mesh, windproof, has pockets for your things and keeps bugs out better. Oh, and it won’t glow under night vision (see here for details vs airsoft outfits).

What’s not to like?