Propagandists from russian military media started bragging about their troops using special suits with a layer of heat insulation material that makes you less visible in a thermal camera viewer.
Photos featuring the effect have been spreading by russian channels actively over the past few days, so Defense Express decided to find out how it would affect the warfare without underestimating or exaggerating things.
Read more: The Importance of Thermal Imagery Advantage in One Video
In fact, such suits are not something uncommon, and based on the information from russian online stores, they cost pretty cheap and affordable. One of the manufacturers offers a brand-new suit for $47.
The company also demonstrated the capabilities of the product in a video. Indeed, it makes heat-emitting things less visible in the thermal camera.
Considering the plethora of Western companies offering similar products of their own making, no wonder russians at some point became interested, too.
The effect is provided by the multi-layer structure of the fabric that is supposed to isolate the heat of the human body yet not emit any of itself.
Surely, it causes issues with heat dissipation. But if we forget about that for a second, making this kind of suit is all about finding such a material that has both high thermal reflection and low emission in the infrared spectrum. Two layers of this material are then separated with synthetic winterizer or the likes of it. Detailed instructions on how to make such costumes started appearing on the wilderness survival channels back 10 years ago.
Then it's all up to the manufacturer's creativity what kind of final dress to make of it, be it a cloak, a poncho, or even a full suit.
But the main problem starts when you have to start moving in this kind of gartment, because the person in it is isolated like in a thermos.
An adequate technological approach that we can see in the attempts by some Western companies is to make lighter cape sets that both conceal the soldier in the IR camera and reduce the chances he collapses from overheating, especially in summer.
However, detailed tests by third-party customers show that physics is hard to deceive. Much depends on the quality of the thermal camera itself and the sensitivity of its imager. The price for a cape, by the way, is up to several hundred bucks, no return, no refund.
So maybe, these posts by russian media are actually aimed to advertise the manufacturers of these thermal suits. Nonetheless, the fact russians now have more of these disguise tools should not be underestimated in the context of the Ukrainian-russian war.
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