Perfect post to plug one of our guest professor’s (the late Harun Farocki) films, Images of the World and the inscription of War. You should see it if you can. Many interesting themes are discussed (like topography and camoflauge) in relation to social themes.
My film history professor used this film as the subject for her dissertation.
I only wish I had intended that, but no.
Clearly I have underestimated the number of geology nerds here.
But you knew what schist is, right?
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It would have been hard to make that pun otherwise. 
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Also used on British tanks, I believe. The desert dazzle camo is particularly festive-looking. (OK, not counting the Peter Blake versions).
The blue makes it look like an attractive oasis. Is that the point?
That would be a war crime.
OK, so I’m thinking of the Ersatz Panther here, which was made to look like the US M10, painted in US camouflage, and assigned to an SS Brigade that was issued US Army uniforms.
But more seriously, I believe the camouflage was supposed to break up the silhouette of the tank outlined against the desert sky. That’s the most effective aspect of camouflage: fuck with human pattern recognition ability. It’s not really about colours at all, but contours.
WWI naval gunners got their range to the target by using a coincidence rangefinder. Anyone who’s used a 35mm rangefinder camera knows the principle, you see an image like this
and rotate the focus until the images line up, then your picture is in focus, or if you’re the gunnery officer on a dreadnought, you can read the range from markings on the rangefinder tube.
Note that if you can’t clearly see any vertical lines on the target, this doesn’t work well at all. Hence all the angled patterns of dazzle camouflage.
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IIRC, the WW2 Long Range Desert Group (forerunner of the SAS) found that the best colour for ‘non-dazzle’ desert camouflage was a very bright pink rather than the more obvious sandy brown, as this blended into a hazy horizon at sunrise/sunset whereas the blinding midday washed-out any colour anyway, so the hue didn’t really matter.
It’s a fascinating subject!
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