![]() ![]() Still, when prodded on details, Meir admits that Black Fox is at TRL 5. He also says that Eltics has come up with a way for a commander to remotely program the IR disguises of Black Fox–shrouded vehicles. "We created a way to make a window thermally invisible, so soldiers can look outside their vehicle and have greater situation awareness," he says. When discussing thermal camouflage, former Eltics CEO and current shareholder Ronen Meir focuses on existing and pending patents. "It won't be sitting around in boxes."Įltics, meanwhile, seems even further behind with its Black Fox solution. "The system will have to be built to customer specifications," he says. The active thermal camouflage hasn't deployed with any military yet, and even if ordered tomorrow, the system would take years of additional trials and customization before it could be fielded. Sjölund also won't discuss the technical-readiness level (TRL) of ADAPTIV and when it will be tested in an operational environment. But, he says, "the system would passively reduce the radar cross-section of a platform because the tiles have an inherent capability of absorbing radio waves." He does grant that synthetic aperture radar, mounted on an aircraft or drone, could image a ground vehicle using ADAPTIV. Likewise, a so-called "vehicle interface sheet" prevents IR hotspots from flaring up should a tile be lost in combat. He insists that the 1000 to 2000 tiles required to cloak an infantry fighting vehicle will not slow it down or chew into its fuel reserves (though he won't say how much it weighs). Even when ADAPTIV cannot fool the human eye, it can frustrate a targeting algorithm.Īlthough ADAPTIV is a super-secret system, Sjölund has a ready response to most objections to his system. But a naval ship, used to combat ranges in the nautical miles, could have a larger tile. You don't want a thermal pattern that doesn't look natural." For example, a vehicle engaged in urban warfare would need hand-size tiles to fool IR imagers at a distance of 200 to 300 meters. "When the enemy is closer," Sjölund says, "you need higher 'resolution,' so the 'pixels' have to be smaller. Think of the tiles as hot and cold pixels comprising a large thermal picture. The actual size of the tile depends on the host platform and its normal distance of engagement). (That's only the land vehicle version of the system. Finally, in 2005, Swedish Defence Material Organisation initiated the Steerable and Controllable IR Signature program, which helped fund ADAPTIV.ĭesigned to blend in with the temperature of its surroundings or mimic the IR signature of something else (for instance, a low-priority Humvee or an enemy tank), ADAPTIV is often shown in the form of 5.5-inch hexagonal tiles. These early attempts ran into snags with excessive power requirements and systems that were too fragile for use on the battlefield. So by the mid-1990s, the Swedish government began experimenting with active temperature modulation to hide IR signals. Passive IR camouflage also yields ho-hum results, says Peder Sjölund, ADAPTIV project manager at BAE Systems. "The heat must escape somehow, or you will reduce the soldier to a hot, stinky puddle." "But you are running up against the laws of physics," camouflage expert retired Lt. military has tried, and continues to try, special dyes and materials in uniforms to shield a soldier's IR signature from these imagers. One can now find this technology on tactical drones and sniper rifles. Since their advent in the 1970s, thermal imagers-sensors that use the mid- and long-range IR spectrum (3.5 to 5, 7.5 to 14 microns) to cut through night, fog, and smoke-have been slowly but inexorably taking over the modern battlefield. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play ![]()
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