Besides AH-6 and MH-6M "Little Birds," and the equipment that is naturally black (such as CRRCs), has the color black fallen out of favor for Spec Ops due to it standing out on NVGs at night and so forth?

I ask because I rarely see SOF ground vehicles painted black these days, even if out of the desert environ. If not black, then what color...the base color?

Also, do SOF still believe that the color black on vehicles gives a "more aggressive appearance," or do they no longer care and believe in blending in with the rest of the painted conventional vehicles?

Thanks.

I've been in SF since 1982. The only black vehicle I ever drove was a Toyota Tacoma.

Whether we tried to paint our vehicles to blend it with Big Army or not, people know who we are. It's how you roll, not what you roll in.

Now your question is asked among bike builders quite a bit, and for me the answer is "Black will never fall out of favor.

Black is always a cool color to wear. But honestly from all the reading I have done and my short time in the military I can say black is not cool. It's not a natural color in nature and sticks out like a sore thumb. I guess what looks black in nature is probably a deep purple or blue. My commander wanted our vehicles to have more black then the standard Camo paint scheme at that time and they stood out a lot in the forrests of Germany for sure.

I also saw a program about the making of stealth aircraft and the F-117. The engineers said black is incorrect, it should be painted gray but the air force idiots would not listen.

So black is not really a color anyway, it's a shade like white. But it's not a good shade for military use at all. Anything that draws your eyes to it is bad and the starkness of black will do that.

I think the key word is appearance, you don't want any.

The only people who seem to use a lot of black in their vehicles are police special ops and super secret government groups who are generally invisible to most people. With police, if you make it in black and call it tactical, someone is going to buy it, no matter what it is.

With police, if you make it in black and call it tactical, someone is going to buy it, no matter what it is.
While this is true, there is a valid reason for it (to a point). The theory is that a person or vehicle all in black is intimidating to most people. For Law Enforcement, getting the bad guy to surrender or at least do what he is being told to do is the goal of almost everything we do. There are times when showing up and looking scary keeps things from getting out of hand, which is when people get hurt.

The Army omitted black from the ACUs, citing that black rarely occurred in nature.

OK, I didn't know black was hardly used by SOFs. I guess I was fooled by the SEAL DPV and USMC M151 MUTT FAV, both which are black. However, there are few of those vehicles anyway.

On the other hand, I would kind of suspect painting SWAT vehicles Military Green may be seen as too militaristic as matt green is rarely seen on the streets. At least semi-gloss black is seen on civilian cars on the streets.

Thanks for the answers.

Another question...

Would one consider black not being used as much because SOF vehicles aren't uses as much during night raids? Considering that the USMC M151 MUTT is retired, and the SEAL DPV and LSV haven't really been used much, that leaves the GMV and those have been often used on daytime raids.

Therefore, what's the need for black vehicles if the trend is for 24-hour SOF vehicle usage instead of exclusively night raids?

I agree that black is probably mostly used to blend into the shadows. But with ops running 24/7, something more flexible is probably the order of the day. Black in the hot sun would really stand out to many types of sensors. As long as you go with a nighttime raider, you might be okay.

It seems from what I have read it won't matter much about the color. The technology is amazing and there are ways now to make things almost invisible. Not only to the human eye but to senors and different wave lengths.

One thing i do know for sure about black ,,, its really does stick out quite nicely at night .. its 'TOO' black ..shapes are not that hard to see which for camo aint that great ,,in Bosnia if we saw a vehicle painted back it stuck out like dogs balls on a ant ..nothing else even came close to its colour ..its like back in WW2 ,,P61 Blackwidow night fighter ..they found that flat black really didnt work ,,very easy to see it in the sky at night so they used gloss black ,,dont know how that works but it did ..imagine a gloss black spec op's vehicle in a battle zone ..dont think so . and black in the middle of summer ..not good .

'Course after you get bored being limited to one color you could always try this

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/14/exclusive-revolutionary-chameleon-tank-gets-invisible/

--now, how to paint invisible. . . .

I think that could be achieved with photoetch. In fact, I do think some vinyl stickers may have that same pattern and effect...those as those in the dollar or stationary store.

Is that a bit of reverse psychology? The biggest and baddest wears black and the good guy wears white?