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Tanks Test Infrared Camouflage Cloak
LibRT writes with this excerpt from the BBC:
"Tanks could soon get night-time invisibility thanks to a cloaking device that masks their infrared signature. Developed by BAE Systems, the Adaptiv technology allows vehicles to mimic the temperature of their surroundings. It can also make a tank look like other objects, such as a cow or car, when seen through heat-sensitive 'scopes. The hi-tech camouflage uses hexagonal panels, or pixels, made of a material that can change temperature very quickly. About 1,000 pixel panels, each of which is 14cm across, are needed to cover a small tank. The panels are driven by on-board thermal cameras that constantly image the ambient temperature of the tank's surroundings. This is projected on to the panels to make it harder to spot. The cameras can also work when the tank is moving."
Look, I'm sure this seems logical to you. Take it from a former Armored Cav officer, what you are describing makes about as much sense as running under a Saturn 5 and lighting the fuse with a Bic to send it to the Moon. The army did threat analysis based on video footage of enemies that actually tried to use visible search lights in various battles from just post Vietnam to Desert Storm, and the number they came up with is that once night vision came in, it deceased the average life span of the enemy to about 0.3 seconds (yes, 3/10ths of a second, and no, I'm not exaggerating). It's actually been doctrine for most modern militarys since WW2, long before light amplification gear became standard, never, ever do this stupid thing in armor vrs. armor combat, and Night Vision didn't make it more feasible but much, much less.
US Main Battle Tanks have a working range of around four miles. Fire up a searchlight that can even reach that far and it will take several seconds to warm up, then you need time to search with it. The user, and every other armored vehicle it is in a group with, will all die before they see what is killing them.
Who is John Cabal?
But if you turn off the engine, you don't have a heat signature anyway. No need for infrared camouflage. Regular camouflage netting will do.
You'll still have a lot of residual heat energy, as it can take a long time for energy acquired from sunlight to be dissipated at night. And metal would generally have a different heat signature at night than surrounds unless they were also metal - but the shape would be easy to make out even then.
I don't think a tank's exhaust works like that. I think it kind of spews all over the place.
Look at your car. Does it "spew exhaust all over the place"? No, it is directed...
Which gets back to the original point. What to do with the heat?
If the panels are actively cooled as well as heated, you could have the cooler panels masking the outgassing source to let it dissipate in the air before leaving the blanket.
But basically the main point is that you can no longer see a giant tank shaped thing clearly using night vision, as most a few odd sources of heat that could be small mammals...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I actually used to be an electronics countermeasure tech in the Marine Corps. Our main job? Stop heat and radar seeking missiles from hitting our birds. Something like dangling a toaster from a pole isn't going to confuse a missile. They (the missiles) are frequently programmed in the field (via presets of course) for various kinds of targets, sometimes down to the engine IR signature frequency (think setting a missile to "AH-1" or "CH-53). Most common was to use a pair of different frequency coding disks to generate false engine signatures which would give a missile a 1:13 chance of hitting the "real" engine. Effectively, we gave the missile 12 engine signatures along with the real engine. That, combined with chaff, flares, and radar jammers, gave your average helicopter pilot a pretty good margin of safety against missiles. The countermeasures are handled automatically with manual overrides provided so things like flares can be manually launched. Basically, in every fighter movie where you hear that "beep beep beep BEEEEEEEP!" upon missile lock? That is what I worked on. Fun stuff :) Remember, you can't really dodge a missile in a helicopter...
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Yes. Parachute flares are very common. They can be fired from a 40mm grenade launcher, mortars, artillery, naval guns, or even dropped from aircraft. But they are still risky. If your enemy has counter battery radar, they can see the trajectory and return fire on your mortars/artillery within seconds. Another problem with these flares is they tend to swing back-and-forth as they hang from the parachute, causing the shadows on the ground to move back and forth as well, which makes it hard to pick out many details.