Slashdot Mirror
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."
Go ahead and do that as the enemy - then please post results.
"Uh sir, I can see through my night vision a line of cows coming towards us at 40mph..."
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Or is this more for some imagined future conflict with tanks rolling around China or Russia?
Remember, the classic military mistake is to plan on fighting the previous war. Of course, the current US military seems hell bent on not making that particular error by trying to fight every possible combination of conflict simultaneously. The weaknesses of that policy are left as an exercise to the reader.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Tanks produce a LOT of heat.
That excess heat has to go somewhere. Otherwise you'll see very HOT cows moving towards you at 40 mph.
Yet checking TFA produces:
I'm thinking that this will later be shown to be extremely limited by the amount of freon carried by the tank.
Using a searchlight is far more likely to tell the enemy your position than to tell you the enemy's position because any searchlight will leak some light off-axis and it takes far less light to spot a light source than to use a light source to spot a target.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Forget cows. If the enemy already knows the tanks are there and have nothing to hit them with make the tank sides look like bull's eyes just to tick the enemy off.
Better yet, have a line of tanks, assign a letter to each, and have 'USA RULEZ' visible only in infrared.
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?
He means you're going to die.
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"