Masking armored vehicle infrared signiture (from above)?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

It's harder then it sounds. Historically tank warfare has hinged on the difficulty of seeing. For one thing there are usually terrain wrinkles even in the desert let alone Europe(though Poland is kinda flat for Europe but not that flat). For another, tanks are cramped places hard to see in. While tank crew poking their heads out of hatches are as vulnerable to sharpshooters as anyone putting their heads up. So whether or not one puts one's head up is a nice point of tactics. One, for instance, that military historians of the Arab-Israeli wars made a comment on when the IDF started ordering every tank in a unit to have a man with a head up instead of just one man.

Having an effective IR allows the option of keeping head down more often. Furthermore the IR(and any other kind of artificial sensor) can be artificially wired into a processor as a human cannot making a different kind of intelligence possible.

Tank warfare is like the legendary old west duels that almost never took place in real life in one sense; that it hinges on getting off the first shot. Because of this, any information that can be gotten is necessary because being the first to spot is usually being the first with a chance to shoot.

Of course what you seem to be talking about is the possibility of defending against the observations available to a space-dominant opponent using conventional means. The fact is, it never has been done before. Desert Storm and Kossovo went to the space dominant power. However Russia has for decades been developing ingenious deception methods to counter such things. They are useful enough in cold war but have not been tested in war.

Also one problem with concealing tanks from space-based observation is that conventional war will have the effects of conventional war. It may be possible to conceal weapons platforms. You can't really conceal refugees on civilian vehicles and it is easy enough by now for a trained analyst to figure out where the invasion is by triangulating the direction refugees are fleeing from. Even if they can conceal the specific platforms, it will not be enough to prevent a defending force arriving in time to bandage the penetration.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

In terms of thermodynamics, the heat that would be picked up by IR has to go somewhere. If you just vent the engine exhaust below the tank you'll end up with a tank shaped cold spot surrounded by a plume of hot air, instead of a plume of hot air coming out the back of the tank. Probably about the same difficulty to hit with a missile.

The approach then would be to have heat sinks that can store the heat inside the tank, and dump it when it's more convenient (read: when there's not a missile coming towards you). I'm not sure how you would do this, but some thing like disposable metal slugs that you drop (perhaps as IR decoys) would be interesting.

Without running any numbers, I'd wonder about using the engine to refrigerate a liquid when not under threat, and then using it for cooling when you are under threat. Either mixing it with the exhaust or piping or spraying it over the top surface.

Of course, the numbers may be unworkable. And if the liquid is anything fancy, that gives you another load on the logistics guys.