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Officers of a Serbian police special operations unit wearing Russian «Smog» camouflage uniforms. The design is clearly based upon the extremely successful British Disruptive Pattern camouflage. [Image: Milan Jovanovic.]

Smog
Russian Federation

Introduced toward the end of the 1990s, Flora is a very effective camouflage pattern for use in central Russia — far more effective than U.S. woodland, digital or Flecktarn would be. The camouflage works well at a range of 50 metres, when new, and at 100 metres, after several washes. Its success, as a camouflage pattern, is attributed to good research for the brown and green colours used, as well as the distribution of horizontal shadows in typical forest undergrowth.

Unfortunately, a camouflage pattern that works well in the Moskovskaya oblast' probably won't be suitable for the Northern Caucasus, where the vegetation has been parched to a yellowish colour, or in the mountains, where clay and bare rocks are visible. Under such conditions, Russian soldiers frequently use surplus Soviet camouflage uniforms or commercially produced camouflage uniforms. Many of the designs used by commercial manufacturers are based upon successful Western camouflage patterns.

Also known as Kukla (Russian: Кукла, 'doll') and 'universal camouflage' (Russian: универсальный камуфляж, trans. universal'nyy kamuflyazh), Smog (Russian: Смог) is a good example of one such commercially produced camouflage pattern.

Introduced in 1999 — this date is an estimate, based on the fact that this pattern does not appear in Dennis Desmond's Camouflage Uniforms of the Soviet Union and Russia, 1937 to the Present, which was published in 1998, but appears in the Kompaniya «SPLAV» Katalog 2000/2001 — Smog is a four-colour camouflage, comprising large whorls of earth brown and medium green, and smaller black 'branches', on a khaki background. It is clearly based upon the extremely successful British DPM design although this variant, which was obtained in 2001, lacks the stippling that is characteristic of British DPM. However, a camouflage pattern that appears to be a later version of Smog includes stippling.

Prior to to the advent of CADPAT™, British DPM was usually the winning pattern, in NATO personal concealment competitions. It was very popular with Russia's Internal Troops of the Ministry for Internal Affairs (Russian: Внутренние войска Министерства внутренних дел, trans. Vnutrenniye Voiska Ministerstva Vnutrennikh Del, VV MVD) during the 1990s and was, therefore, a suitable candidate for imitation.

In Russia, the use of Smog is largely limited to special detachments of the VV MVD, since most commercially manufactured uniforms must be provided by sponsors or purchased by soldiers out of their own pockets. However, it appears that Smog might also be a export item, now. Recent photographs seem to show this camouflage pattern being used by police special operations units in Srbija i Crna Gora ('Serbia and Montenegro').

kamouflage.net is grateful to Milan Jovanovic and Chris Landry, for their invaluable contributions to this article.

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