What are the advantages of smoke screen camouflage?

Smoke camouflage is a traditional camouflage method that uses smoke to obscure and confuse the enemy. In ancient wars, people often used natural fog to conceal their military movements. However, natural fog is limited by time, location and meteorological conditions, and has great limitations. It requires the ability to "know astronomy from above and geography from below." Therefore, people have studied the use of artificial methods to create smoke to conceal their actions. By the mid-18th century, artificial smoke began to appear and was immediately used in warfare.

In the First World War at the beginning of the 20th century, due to the expansion of the scale of the war and the emergence of rapid-fire weapons, the issue of protecting the effective strength of the army became increasingly important. Therefore, smoke screens play an important role in concealing military combat operations and protecting the effective forces of the military. Smoke screens were used extensively by belligerent armies throughout the war.

In the Second World War, which was unprecedented in scale, the use of smoke screens reached its peak. When the Soviet army forcibly crossed the Don River, the Northern Donets River, the Dnieper River, the Ness River, and the Oder River, they used smoke screens to effectively blind the German observation posts and artillery firing positions, thereby concealing their actions and greatly Reduce the losses of troops and weapons. During the battle to forcibly cross the Dnieper River, the Soviet army implemented smoke camouflage at 69 ferry crossings and a 30-kilometer-wide river surface, turning the river surface into a sea of ??clouds. The German army could not distinguish where were the ferries and docks, and which were the river banks and the center of the river. All we can do is to bombard them indiscriminately. After all the Soviet troops had crossed the river, the German planes were still "circling" in the sky.

Smoke screens are not only used to conceal moving targets on the battlefield, but can also be used to conceal large fixed targets. The smoke screen covers a very large area, usually far exceeding the plane size of the target itself, making it impossible for the opponent to determine the precise location of the target. At the same time, smoke screens can quickly create obstructions and immediately produce concealment effects. For example, in World War II, before the German aviation bombed the docks in Plymouth, the British army deployed large-scale smoke screens and simulated fires near the docks to confuse the German pilots and prevent them from accurately aiming at the target. and determine the effectiveness of the attack, thereby better protecting Plymouth Dockyard.

The most commonly used traditional smoke screen camouflage equipment includes smoke grenades, smoke cans, smoke rockets, smoke artillery shells and smoke rockets. The smoking agents used in these smoking devices are usually yellow phosphorus, plasticized yellow phosphorus, chlorosulfonic acid solution, titanium tetrachloride, hexachloroethane, petroleum lubricants containing kerosene and rocket fuel, diesel, etc. These smoke screen camouflage equipment are mainly used for visible light reconnaissance, but are somewhat inadequate for modern reconnaissance methods such as radar and infrared.

The new smoke screen camouflage equipment successfully developed in the late 1960s can not only deal with visible light reconnaissance, but also radar and infrared reconnaissance. From August 22 to 23, 1968, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's radar monitoring the skies over the Czech Republic suddenly became severely blinded, and a "white fog" appeared on the display. At the same time, the Soviet army carried out a large-scale airborne landing in Prague and took control of Prague within 6 hours and occupied the entire Czech Republic in 22 hours. It was later discovered that in order to conceal its aerial actions to invade the Czech Republic, the Soviet army had deployed a special smoke screen - an aerosol composed of metal particles - in the direction of West Germany and Austria. This "smoke screen" strongly interfered with NATO's surveillance radars, making them unaware of the large-scale airborne invasion of the Soviet Union.

In addition to smoke screens that interfere with radar, people have developed smoke screens specifically to deal with infrared reconnaissance and infrared guided weapons. The raw material of this smoke screen is particulate powder with a diameter of 3 to 60 microns. The powder can be talc, kaolin, amine sulfate, calcium carbonate, amine phosphate, sodium bicarbonate, etc. These soluble materials are ejected from the smoke box with the help of compressed air to form a floating smoke cloud. The smoke cloud is neutral, non-toxic and cold, and will not be penetrated by infrared rays. Therefore, it can deal with various infrared observers and thermal imagers. Tanks and ships using this smoke screen can avoid being tracked by infrared and laser-guided missiles and reduce the missile's hit rate on the target. This kind of smoke screen also plays an important role in protecting fixed targets, such as bridges, large factories, etc.

Although smoke screen camouflage is effective, it is easily affected by weather and terrain. Heavy rain can speed up the dissipation of smoke screens. If the wind direction is unfavorable, it may "shoot yourself in the foot" and make the smoke screen help the enemy; forests, rivers and highlands will also reduce the depth of the spread of smoke screens. Additionally, the effective duration of smoke screens is relatively short. Therefore, when using smoke screen camouflage, the quantity, layout method and release timing of smoke screen equipment must be determined based on the wind direction, wind speed and other specific conditions in the target area. It can be expected that under high-tech conditions in the future, smoke screen camouflage will still be the "magic weapon" for defeating the enemy.