Modern French Army paint set

From desert yellow to infrared green

The vehicles of the French army went through three color eras after the Second World War and this selection covers all of them. Jaune Sahara was the overall finish of equipment stationed in desert areas in the 1950s and 1960s, among others during the Suez crisis of 1956. From the early 1950s to the end of the 1980s Vert IR OTAN then dominated, which earlier sources describe as army green.

With the start of the 1990s came the three-color standard made up of Brun Terre IR, Vert Foncé IR and NATO Black. AMX Leclerc and AMX 30 tanks, the AMX 30 AuF1 self-propelled howitzer and the wheeled VBCI and VAB vehicles wear this pattern. The sixth tone, Sable Desért IR, combines with the brown into a desert variant for deployments outside Europe.

Why the shades have the abbreviation IR in their names

The letters IR mean that the original finishes were formulated with an eye to reflectance in the infrared band. On a finished model this makes no difference at all, but it explains why a seemingly ordinary green on French equipment differs from the greens of other armies and why it cannot be replaced by a random tone.

The Orange Line is built on a lacquer binder; the right thinner is a lacquer one, not a water-based one, and respiratory protection is a necessity when spraying. The dried coat is thin and takes decals well.

On French equipment the three-color European pattern has characteristically large fields with hard edges, so it is masked with tape rather than sprayed freehand. The desert variant is simpler, because it works with only two tones laid out in broad bands.