'Invisible' Active/Optical Camouflage - Be the Predator

[Rue]

I have been looking into the technology that they are using to develop camouflaged armour that makes the wearer almost invisible using light refraction amongst other technologies. Looking into it further, I came across this short video.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=06f_1176746429

It depicts a tank in Iraq being disabled by an insurgent's IED. Towards the end of the clip a soldier runs in from right-screen to help the occupants of the tank. The strange thing is that he appears almost invisible, his armour recreating the shapes and tones of objects directly behind him as he runs. I have searched for details on this video, but still cannot find out if it is authentic or not. It seems incredible to me that they may have developed this technology this far and are using it in the field, which is why I am rather sceptical as to it's authenticity.

Does anyone have any more info on this video?

 

[ExigeEvan]

I was under the impression that it was more like adaptive camoflauge rather than "invisibility", which appears to be the case where this guys head disappears.

I'm tempted to say it was just a glitch in the compression cause by the guy moving at speed through the picture.

 

[Rue]

I was under the impression that it was more like adaptive camoflauge rather than "invisibility", which appears to be the case where this guys head disappears.

I'm tempted to say it was just a glitch in the compression cause by the guy moving at speed through the picture.

Yeah, I just meant 'invisible' in the way that it appeared to mimic the surroundings to blend into 'invisibility'.

I'd be with you on the compression thing but doesn't it seem too precisely defined to be that?

 

[Danoff]

Is this work-safe? It requires an 18+ verification.

 

[zoxxy]

Is this work-safe? It requires an 18+ verification.

Yeah.

 

[Danoff]

Ok they really should do something about the music.

It did look like the guy was wearing a suit of some kind, and he was hard to spot in the brush (video issues?). But he wasn't so hard to spot when he was on top of the tank.

 

[FoolKiller]

When the guy ran across I thought it might have been a suit of some sort, but when the other soldiers walk across in front of the building the parts covered by their uniforms seemed to disappear as well.

I think the shade of the uniform was very close to that of the background and the poor quality makes it blend in. My best guess is it is camoflauge doing what it does, making soldiers blend into the background.

 

[land sea air]

but also notice that he is at the least dressed very differently than the other soldiers, perhaps in civilian clothes if not in some sort of armor

 

[Lee]

Someone has been looking at MGS4 waaaay too much.

 

[Stevisiov]

Someone has been looking at MGS4 waaaay too much.

I was thinking the same thing when I read the thread earlier. its hard to say because the video isn't to sharp, I doubt he had immensly high tech camo.

 

[Philly]

If it was some sort of invisibility cloak, wouldn't it have hidden him against the tank?

 

[Keef]

I know our soldiers train thoroughly and all that, but they should have anticipated something at a bottleneck like that. This was probably just one of those times they forgot, or maybe they went through there an hour earlier and nothing was there. Or maybe they're staying in the tank so they aren't vulnerable.

But anyway. Did that little firecracker actually immobilize the tank? I saw three people run out, and I think Abrams tanks only require three operators.

And I have no idea what the deal is with that soldier. That's just weird.

 

[YSSMAN]

AFAIK, there are prototypes of this technology that are currently being worked on under contract by the DoD, but last I had understood it, it was never anywhere near capable of being tested. Furthermore, I think they were closer to doing things on the vehicles before the soldiers themselves, so my guess is that its an issue with the video.

Its a technology that holds a lot of promise for those who will hold it (likely the US, UK, and Aussie forces first and foremost), and probably scares the hell out of those who won't have it (Russia, China, Iran). My guess is that we're at least 20 or more years away from having an actual system that works well enough to make a difference.

 

[land sea air]

yeah I was trying to make sense of the video as well, I thought that the three guys running by might have been the enemy considering that they were dressed unlike a US soldier.

 

[niky]

It's an artifact of compression. In compressing a video, the program that compresses it makes guesses as to which sections of pixels are actually in motion and which are static from frame to frame, then does a sort of electronic "cut-and-paste", keeping the same pixels from frame to frame, to save space.

If the video has low contrast, like this one does, it may very well skip changing certain parts of the video if the uniform of the person who is moving is at least close in tone to the background they're moving against.

You note in the first part, the middle soldier, whose uniform obviously isn't the same as the "ghost", "disappears" when they move against the wall, running at a clip. The speed of the moving "ghost" also brings into question the frame-rate and fidelity of the original recorder, which probably can't capture subtle contrast that well and already introduces some measure of compression into the original recording.

And, as the others have noted, the light colored parts of the soldiers' uniforms blend completely with the wall, as well... another artifact of poor compression or over compression.

 

[FoolKiller]

But anyway. Did that little firecracker actually immobilize the tank? I saw three people run out, and I think Abrams tanks only require three operators.

The tank was still functional, but lost its treads. That is probably the quickest and easiest way to disable a tank. It was far from destroyed.