SLAP Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Anyone else seen this news report? I can't find this story on the BAE website, although it's on several news sites (some more reputable than others...)? http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/emerging-tech/2011/01/17/bae-turns-to-e-ink-to-develop-invisible-tanks-40091448/ SLAP 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boche Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 yeah I read this a couple of weeks ago...the article said it would be fielded in less than 5 years, something i highly doubt 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Interesting, thanx for the link. (I thought they were going to make it look like a Vauxhall or somesuch lol.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Sure except the mud still shows up. And when the mud splashes over the sensors they don’t work. Still a bit of a way to go until this works outside of a lab. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Hey Comrade, it looks like there is a pile of noisy **** moving about out there! Don't worry, it's just a Vauxhall. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ribosom Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Modern long-range AT-Weapons use thermal imaging, don´t they? :/ 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZPB II Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Dust, mud, maintenance...Just a few things to pop in my mind in a couple of seconds...I can see it working when the tank is still, but when it's in motion...Maybe it's teflon coated? Then there's indeed the thermal imaging issue. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damian90 Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Thermals are no problems these days, even a bit primitive Nagidka gives 30% less thermal signature of vehicle, while such things like Saab Barracuda MCS or Intermat Stealth IR paints are making vehicle... well invisible in thermals. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
__Yossarian0815[jby] Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Pfff, stealth tanks exist in CMA. Just lost an entire Muj sqaud to an cloaked Shilka 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZPB II Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Thermals are no problems these days, even a bit primitive Nagidka gives 30% less thermal signature of vehicle, while such things like Saab Barracuda MCS or Intermat Stealth IR paints are making vehicle... well invisible in thermals. Ah, gotcha. Guess I got too used to BMP-2s looking like Christmas lights through a thermal. I'd still like to hear how the engineers plan to get this thing to work when it's moving. You got the noise, you got the dust, you get the little pieces of earth flying in arches behind the tracks, hell, you got the damn tank making tracks in the ground...Ok, may'be it's a wee bit harder to spot and especially to aim at properly, but, is it worth the cost? On defense, I can see the advantage... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Thermals are no problems these days, even a bit primitive Nagidka gives 30% less thermal signature of vehicle, while such things like Saab Barracuda MCS or Intermat Stealth IR paints are making vehicle... well invisible in thermals. How? Regardless of what the IR paint does, it'll still leave a thermal 'hole' against the background and ambient, unless the paint can some how sense the background temp and transfer that to the foreground. Sounds like a bit of a tall order for a paint. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damian90 Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Don't ask me how, anyone who knows how will not tell me or You. Image is worth more than a thousand words. Saab Barracuda MCS camouflage nett. M1A1/A2 Abrams tanks, one in standard CARC camouflage paint, second with Intermat Stealth IR camouflage paint. Leopard 2A6HEL, one in standard camouflage paint, second with Intermat paint. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 right. So you can still see them, they just don't stand out as much. Look for next gen TIs to negate the paint. Heck, you can probably negate it already by narrowing the gate. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damian90 Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 If this would be so easy then solution should be allready used in TI sights. Sure probably everything depends on distance, how good is TIS etc. Still such camouflage systems greatly increase survivability of vehicle. And still when vehicle is not bright like a christmas tree, then it is a good chance that gunner or commander will miss it in thermals. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Praetori Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Sure except the mud still shows up. And when the mud splashes over the sensors they don’t work. Still a bit of a way to go until this works outside of a lab. I can indeed see the use of instantly adaptable camouflage. But I'd still pick a bucket of IR paint any day. Don't ask me how, anyone who knows how will not tell me or You. Image is worth more than a thousand words. Saab Barracuda MCS camouflage nett. M1A1/A2 Abrams tanks, one in standard CARC camouflage paint, second with Intermat Stealth IR camouflage paint. Leopard 2A6HEL, one in standard camouflage paint, second with Intermat paint. It helps, sure as hell. But a good IR cam will show everything, IR camo not. With a good system it's like looking at a grayscale photo, where IR netted/painted stuff looks like a derelict vehicle while the non protected ones shine like beacons. As with any camo it won't make you invisible but in combat every little detail that helps you survive is worth the effort. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Technically it's Infra Red Reflective (IRR) Paint and is little use against thermal imagers. I find the debate around this technology fascinating/irritating because so many people fall into a camp that say: "Well, it isn't going to make a tank invisible so it is useless" Why bother painting a tank green at all (or yellow if you are in a desert)? It isn't going to make it invisible. Why bother with funky camouflage patterns? It doesn't make a tank impossible to spot. In fact, being as thermal imagers make everything stand out like a neon light, why bother at all? Let's have some nice heraldic colours! The fundamental effects of camouflage should be obvious to anyone who has given it more than a cursory study. Camouflage is intended to make the object that you are trying to hide harder to spot. Invisible is nice, but harder than normal to see is good too. Matching colours is a good start - it isn't often that you lose a yellow ball on a snooker table. This new concept, if it can defeat some other obstacles, stands a good chance of helping with that. It doesn't have to try for Predator levels of effect. Simply changing colours or pattern on the fly would have benefits, even with a bit of local geology over some of it. Secondly, you want to break up the outline in an irregular fashion. It might keep you alive for a few more seconds if the bad guy cannot work out what your vehicle is or where he should aim (look for dazzle patterns. Pick a pattern, perhaps this concept can generate it. Maybe you could subtly change it every so often to stop an enemy getting used to it or to suit a different environment (see the camo scheme of the Berlin Brigade). Thirdly, the human eye is attracted to movement. What everyone seems to miss is that this technology could potentially make moving patterns. That seems like a contradiction at first, but realise that you could move the pattern backwards as the vehicle moves forwards. It doesn't have to match the surrounding terrain, it just has to mute the appearance of movements. If the colour difference between the colour of the moving pattern and the base vehicle colour is greater than the colour difference between the base vehicle colour and the surrounding terrain, then the stationary aspect will take precedence and make the vehicle harder to spot or harder to work out what it is, how fast or in which direction it is going etc. (makes judging lead tricky, even with fire control, if you can't track the centre of mass accurately.) Regarding thermal imagers. Great gizmos no doubt, but they are pretty expensive. In a world where RPGs cost in the tens of dollars, throwing up your hands in defeat because someone might have a sight costing thousands of dollars seems a little foolish. Bar armour gets fitted to AFVs but it's pretty much pointless against anything except a couple of specific warheads. Most weapons are and will remain aimed using vis-light optical sights. If you can minimise your signature, OK maybe it can be negated by messing around with the settings, but you have to know that you need to mess around with the settings. Perhaps that could be used against an observer. If you could make the same technology work to vary the emissivity of parts of the tank, you could make it work against TIs by going for the dazzle effect. Use one tank in a troop as a decoy by ratcheting their signature right up so others with normal signatures don't show up as much after the observer has messed around with his settings to compensate. Maybe new TIs make it all pointless, but that's the whole armour/anti-armour competition, isn't it? I think that Praetori has it: As with any camo it won't make you invisible but in combat every little detail that helps you survive is worth the effort. That said, there are still some real hurdles to overcome before a system like this is practical. You have to run the control system all over the vehicle. It has to be robust and arbodynamic. It must have a safe default (blue screen of death has never been more literal) it has to work without compromising the signature in other ways (thermal, acoustic, radar, glint) It has to be reliable enough that you can slap it on the tank and not have to worry about it all the time. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Praetori Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 That said, there are still some real hurdles to overcome before a system like this is practical. You have to run the control system all over the vehicle. It has to be robust and arbodynamic. It must have a safe default (blue screen of death has never been more literal) it has to work without compromising the signature in other ways (thermal, acoustic, radar, glint) It has to be reliable enough that you can slap it on the tank and not have to worry about it all the time. Yeah we discussed this at my regiment some ten years ago (when we tested out the Saab IR netting). If you can fire a few red flares around in the terrain and then see little red dots appearing on the supposedly actively camoed vehicles then it's not much good. Robustness and EW safety is always important. Though it's an interesting technique for sure. Now this is an interesting piece of technology. Multiple Return Laser Radar is freaky. I've seen a live test but I can't find a video of it but camo netting, IR paint and so forth, helps little. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 If this would be so easy then solution should be allready used in TI sights. It already is. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damian90 Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Try harder and give even small proof. ;-) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Oh, to elucidate on the original statement of my last post, IRR paint is to ensure that there is not a tank-shaped black spot in the surrounding terrain in the near IR range (0.7-1.4micron, apparently) TI works in the 3-12 micron range. Fish in alternative boiling vessels. The goal of the coverings that seek to elude TI sensors is to match emissivity and temperature to the surroundings or balance the two to create the illusion that the vehicle is the same temperature and emissivity as the surroundings. In both cases it should look like another patch of ground. To look like a black hole, it would have to be colder, which would show up just as well as a nice hot target. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Try harder and give even small proof. ;-) What are you on about? I've used TI. They have a settable gate, that can be shifted up or down the scale, and widened or narrowed as required. They've had this for years. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 The goal of the coverings that seek to elude TI sensors is to match emissivity and temperature to the surroundings or balance the two to create the illusion that the vehicle is the same temperature and emissivity as the surroundings. In both cases it should look like another patch of ground. To look like a black hole, it would have to be colder, which would show up just as well as a nice hot target. Sure but how practical is this. Side swipe the first tree and there’s a whole section of “reflectivity” gone. Reminds of when we had some boffins from our DSTO (Defence Scientific and Technology Organization) around. They had some rig to put on the outside and they asked us to trial it and were stunned when within 600m of going cross country the driver ripped half of it off because the guys in the lab coats hadn’t thought about the overhang. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Praetori Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Sure but how practical is this. Side swipe the first tree and there’s a whole section of “reflectivity” gone. Reminds of when we had some boffins from our DSTO (Defence Scientific and Technology Organization) around. They had some rig to put on the outside and they asked us to trial it and were stunned when within 600m of going cross country the driver ripped half of it off because the guys in the lab coats hadn’t thought about the overhang. Covering the entire vehicle with spruce branches is still the best method I've seen (natural or synthetic). Sure the vehicles are impossible to ID even for friendlies but it's great visible light camo as well as IR. Although it's a tad bit conspicuous in a desert environment. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibsonm Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Ah but then you’ll no doubt breach your environmental compliance certificate. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boche Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 Ah but then you’ll no doubt breach your environmental compliance certificate. Its war dammit! Someone is going to get offended! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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