[quote]The Mage wrote:
First of all, if applied properly, it works all around, not just at one little angle. Looking into this, I found information that shows it camouflages at 20 feet or greater, and makes the tank, or other object about 85% invisible.[/quote]
Once again, I’m no liberal hippy saying we’re going to lose, the shear force in Iraq is too great for the insurgency to overcome. I’m more a fiscal conservative scientist, wanting to maintain the maximum reserve for the most protracted war on terror and appalled by the lack of creativity and efficacy of this “breakthrough”.
That said, “if applied properly” is quite literally a drawing on a napkin. I’ve worked on several projects from the lab to the market and from “if applied properly” to “all the angles all the time” is lots of hard work and the fact that it involves a complex camera projector setup from one little angle doesn’t bode well for ‘commercialization’.
The V-22 was supposed to cost $2.5B to develop and if applied properly was to serve a niche that neither helicopters nor planes could fill. Unfortunately, it cost $50.5B and crashes in ways that neither helicopters nor planes do. The DoD’s biggest advantage when developing new technology is volume. They fund lots of ideas with lots of money. The downside is you get guru worship, ‘money fixes everything’ mentalities and PR&D. In the end, lots of money gets dumped into projects with no real future, developing complex solutions to simple problems. Anti-tank mines/IEDs kill more tank crews than anything in Iraq whether the tanks were visible or not. It’s a very bad remnant of the Cold War mentality that is specifically the weakness asymmetric warfare is meant to address.
You aren’t really thinking about it. Technically all cloth is IR blocking cloth and the problem is more complex than just ‘throw a blanket over it’. You’d have to stop everything from producing and/or irradiating heat. The tank. The “invisibility” projectors. Everything. Overall, it violates the first law of thermodynamics so you can only do it temporarily. Assuming you can’t just boil your tank and crew, you’d need a system to absorb that heat. Given enough time and money, you could develop a complex refrigeration system that could do it, but then once again, it’s pointless if any part of the tank weighs enough to set off $100 anti-tank mines.
Also, looking further into this, one of the biggest improvements to the M-1’s after Desert Storm? Infrared identification tags to prevent friendly fire. Seems like invisibility would undo a lot of this.
Several Eastern Europeans I’ve worked with used to use the phrase “the Russian way” and this thread makes me think we are “technologically” the Soviets in this fight. Solving problems by throwing men and money at them and doing things in volume rather than fighting (again “technologically”) intelligently, efficiently, and creatively.