Helping to dress the invisible soldier

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This article was published 17/02/2002 (8725 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You may have seen the Invisible Man in a movie, but have you heard about the soldier in the invisible uniform?

The technology experts with the Department of National Defence say he’s in the works.

“It’s probably not that far away,” said spokesman Maj. Doug Palmer in Ottawa.

The uniform the soldier will be wearing won’t really be invisible — just harder to detect. Its computerized fabric will blend into the environment like a chameleon. Sensors in the fabric will measure the light, shape and colour of the surroundings. This information will be sent to a microprocessor that will automatically adjust the colour, tone and pattern of the uniform.

The basic technology already exists, Palmer said. A company in New York City has invented a T-shirt that serves as a walking electronic billboard when it’s connected to a computer.

But developing it for soldiers in combat, and then mass- producing the uniforms, will require some work, he said.

For now, cutting-edge uniforms are being produced at Winnipeg’s Peerless Garments. Since 1998, the company has supplied the military with nearly 200,000 uniforms.

“We’re very proud of what we do here,” said Albert El Tassi, Peerless’ general manager and vice-president of the company, which has supplied the military since 1954.

“We do all the design, development and research. We’re not just a ‘cut-and-sew’ operation,” he said.

At the back of his factory, hanging on a rack with a veritable wardrobe of military clothes, is a sample desert uniform in a tan computer-generated camouflage pattern.

It has zippered vents in the underarms, and combines fleece and nylon/cotton material, with a taupe maple leaf patch on the shoulder. The textiles are still being developed, but Peerless plans to bid on the contract for the uniform, expected to be tendered by summer.

It’s also likely to bid on the next military uniform design in the works –an urban Canadian Disruptive Pattern (CADPAT). The camouflage suit, for soldiers deployed in cities, is about two years away from completion, Palmer said.

The military already has CADPAT uniforms in ‘Temperate Woodlands’ green that are being made by Peerless on Notre Dame Avenue.

The trademarked pattern uses special inks that can’t be detected by infrared or night-vision goggles, Palmer said. The fabric pattern is computer-generated from digitized photo images of the different landscapes to which Canadian soldiers may be deployed.

The green CADPAT uniforms made the news recently when critics complained that Canadian soldiers deployed in Afghanistan stuck out like sore thumbs next to their U.S. counterparts, who are wearing tan camouflage.

Canadian soldiers in Kandahar improvised, painting their rucksacks, helmets and flak jackets with beige latex paint.

Earlier this month, the Canadian Forces unveiled a sample desert CADPAT uniform. Palmer, who modelled the tan-coloured combat clothes for the media, said the desert CADPAT design should be approved later this year.

It’s not just a matter of picking out a pattern, buying the fabric and having it sewn, Palmer said.

The fabric is developed with special dye to make it undetectable by infrared devices. It must also meet other specifications, depending on where and how it’s worn. Ships’ crews and firefighters need fire-retardant material. Personnel working around helicopters need antistatic fabric.

“With those graphite blades whipping though the air, a fairly extensive electric charge is being built up.”

The military is constantly trying to anticipate scientific breakthroughs and stay one step ahead of the enemy. That gets trickier as technology evolves and makes the latest protective covering obsolete.

“For every bullet I can stop with my protective vest, there’s a bigger, better bullet that can project through the vest,” Palmer said.

While he designs better protective devices, someone else is designing more aggressive weapons.

“Some days I win, some days he wins.”

They keep playing the game because the stakes are so high –a soldier’s life.

“His ability to camouflage and conceal is statistically significant,” Palmer said. “It gives him a 35 to 45 per cent advantage in protection.”

In downtown Winnipeg, rows and rows of workers at the Peerless Garment factory are busy trying to hide Canada’s peacekeepers from the enemy.

The garment workers are sewing 132,000 field combat outerwear uniforms for the Department of National Defence. More than half are in the green CADPAT design.

The order for polar fleece jackets and trousers, waterproof combat coats and trouser ensembles and waterproof parkas and overalls will use almost half a million yards of fabric, said El Tassi.

The three-layer system is designed to protect a soldier in temperatures ranging from -57 C to 10 C, said El Tassi.

On the Peerless factory floor, bins of camouflage jackets and pants with a pattern of tiny square pixels in two shades of green, black and brown are ready to go. They will end up on Canadian military personnel around the world, including Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

El Tassi thinks the uniform controversy in Afghanistan was blown out of proportion. The public shouldn’t be left with the impression that the military’s been caught with its pants down, he said.

In fact, the Canadian military has been working on a design for desert uniforms for some time. The United States-led war against terrorism was launched before they were ready to go into production, he said.

“We didn’t plan this war,” said El Tassi.

The green woodlands pattern is already being worn by one-third of Canada’s army. The design has caught the eye of hunters and other civilians who want to blend into the background.

“I get lots of calls,” El Tassi said.

He has to tell callers: “No you can’t buy them –they’re classified.”

El Tassi stressed the sample desert uniform is just a sample –the military hasn’t even approved the CADPAT desert material yet. A contract for uniforms can’t be tendered until all the specifications are set, he said.

But if the federal government had the textile approved and specs ready and was in a hurry to get them to 750 troops to be posted in Afghanistan, his company could make that many in two weeks, he said.

Peerless could replace 750 of the 132,000 uniforms on order with the tan-coloured CADPAT uniforms, he said.

It wouldn’t be the first time the company, which has subcontractors in Montreal and Quebec who do the bulk of the work, cranked up production for the military, he said.

“When our soldiers went to Bosnia for the first time, we turned the heat up,” said El Tassi, pointing to a framed letter on the wall in his office from the departments of National Defence and Public Works acknowledging the company’s efforts to get uniforms ready on short notice for the Bosnia mission.

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carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca