Deafeating FLIR (to a degree) has any one been experimenting?

So the people over at SnakeBite Tactical have come up with this... A cloak made out of a sandwich of heat reflective material used in housing insulation and an inch of polyester batting in the middle, along with some camo and field craft.


Now that cloak sounds a little warm to me, i think you also need a way of actively dissipating heat if your planning on marching around with a plate carrier (especially steel) and a rifle to boot. You might be better off if you're running these since they weigh 1/3 of steel plates. infidel light weight composite plates

I believe i have found half the solution wearing, "UnderArmor" or "CoolMax" clothing under your plates along with this:


now i believe the other half maybe a combination of things to actively dissipate heat not just keeping the sweat away. (this is the experiment id like to see). You could get a neck fan online and/or a fan that blows air down in between you and your armor:

If you can find it that us army micro climate cool vest for sale any where... You might have to make your own with a cpu fan or rc electric ducted fan system, now the only issue with that is the noise. I was thinking about making my own setup with an edf system, any one have a better idea for dissipating body heat to reduce signature while using a make shift thermal cloak?

For some reason none of the videos are working for me...

I fixed your videos. What you did wrong was put the whole link address in there. If you hit "quote" on this post you'll see how the code is supposed to look.

a reply to: Skid Mark
thanks for fixing the videos!

Actually, I have high end thermal imaging equipment and thousands of hours of experience with it. One of the major flaws I see with active cooling systems is that people try to vent the heat downward toward the ground. Since air is transparent to most thermal imaging techniques this is not necessary because the plume cannot be seen. Venting downward however, heats the ground leaving a heated trail along the way.

a reply to: sladewilson
You're welcome. I remember when I had trouble posting videos and how frustrating it was. Like I said, if you hit quote it will show you what the code looks like. It's basically everything after the equal sign in the link address.

When it comes down to it, proper evasion tactics are what count the most. You need to remember that thermal imagers really have their limits.

They cannot see through anything except thin plastic like materials such as poly tarps, garbage bags and vapor barrier. Planning your cover is paramount.

Also on days (and nights) where temperature deltas are large, using a thermal imager to spot activity is very difficult, especially if you are in a hurry. This is because the background becomes very mottled (busy) with with different objects cooling or heating at different rates due to their varied thermal masses. So for example, move during sunny days and clear nights. stay put during lengthy overcast spells when the background is all one even temperature and living things will contrast sharply with it.

Here is an excellent short video showing how effectively a sleeping bag works to temporarily defeat thermal imaging.

I was thinking space blanket.....that thin silvery stuff....cammoed with some foliage maybe?
Probably work for a hide....

a reply to: bandersnatch

Unfortunately no. Space blankets are thermal reflectors not insulators. They are designed to reduce radiant heat loss through reflection and also convective heat loss by producing an air envelope. Because they are made from a very dense material (plastic and metal), when thermally bridged they conduct heat rapidly, transferring it en-mass to outer surfaces. The other problem is that they are highly reflective so with thermography they look basically like a giant piece of aluminum foil against the natural setting. That being said, if a very good insulative layer was placed between two space blankets and the outer blanket covered with a non-reflective, very low thermal mass material then it would make a fairly effective thermographic barrier, potentially even to the point that convection on the exterior would be adequate enough to keep surface temperatures below detectable levels indefinitely.

a reply to: sladewilson

Few decades ago Swedes developed an aerosol dispensing system pretty much blocking IR channels ... Dunno its current whereabouts.

a reply to: sladewilson

When I was in, we had the TOWmissile system, it's targeting scope has IR.

Playing opfor I learned how to defeat it very easy.

A couple sticks, like a broom handle and a yard stick, a couple trash bags, and some duct tape.

So you tape the yard stick horizontally, at the end of the broom handle, making a large capital T.

Then tape a 50 gallon trash bag to the yard stick, then tape another to the bottom of that one.

Walk holding it out in front of you, the trashbags will stay the ambient temp of the Air, and reflect your thermal signature away. Because the trashbags are 2 layers thick, a layer of air will insulate the front facing bag from the the back bag, so even if you stand still, at 5 foot away your body heat can't warm it anyways.

Works very well for getting close without being seen.

Just roll around in the mud like Arnold did in Predator. If it fools aliens then it should fool flir.

a reply to: Sargeras

The early universe and its photons must have been much different back when you were playing OpFor. Modern long wave IR light goes right through trash bags as I mentioned in a post prior to yours. But just so everybody is on the same wavelength, I did an experiment to prove it....

So in the first two images you see the setup. For extra effect (and ease of setup) I actually used two trash bags. As you can see I hung them up with about a five inch gap between them. For more comprehensive results I even staggered them by about six inches so that it is easy to see that there is actually two bags, and also so you can see the difference between imaging through one bag and two bags. Really what I have provided is your system but with the thickness of the plastic doubled.



As you can see by the third image (which is the thermal equivalent of the second image) it is almost as though the bags are not there. In fact I really had to tweak the imager settings just to get the edges of the bags to show up. Even so, the single bag layer is barely visible at all. The two bags working together with a five inch separation between them was not really much better at blocking the thermal radiation.


When I'm using an thermal imager in inclement weather I often put a piece of Saran wrap over the lens, held in place with an elastic band. If Saran wrap isn't handy I will use a piece of garbage bag.

originally posted by: jimmybob
Just roll around in the mud like Arnold did in Predator. If it fools aliens then it should fool flir.

I hope you are not serious. I hope even more that you don't base what you believe by what you see in the movies.