One of the many apocryphal stories about the US military relates to their attempts to develop a camouflage effective against thermal imaging devices. As you’ll probably be aware from wildlife programmes, infra-red detection can be used to identify a living being by the heat given off from its body. If the hot spots are rabbit shaped, it’s pretty likely you’re looking at a rabbit; by the same token, if they are man shaped it’ll probably be a man you’re looking at.

Anyone who’s seen ‘Predator’ will also have some idea of what infra-red vision looks like, from the shots where you see through the eyes of the alien. Unfortunately though, I have to report that smearing yourself from head to toe in river mud (in the manner employed so manfully by Mr Schwarzenegger to fool the alien) doesn’t actually work.

Millions of dollars of US government money were spent on finding a solution to the problem of infra-red visibility, leading to the development of clothing that concealed these ‘heat signatures’. Of course soldiers had to be completely covered in this special insulating fabric for it to be effective, but it looked like the defence contractors were on to something really big. Well, until, during field tests when it was discovered that, while anyone wearing these suits would be prevented from giving off any heat whatsoever, thereby making them invisible to thermal imaging devices, they would, as a result, pass out from overheating after only a few minutes and could even die if not rescued quickly.

Actually, I think they missed a trick here. If, instead of totally covering soldiers in heat insulating material, they had instead opted simply to disrupt the human outline by creating heat-transparent windows in the shape of other animals, this could have allowed the cooling necessary for the combatant to continue functioning. In addition, by presenting, in infra-red, what looks like a tower of acrobatic bunnies precariously balancing on each others backs, any sniper seeing such a spectacle would simply assume they’d been overdoing it and go away scratching their head.

You could also vary the animal-shaped windows to include koalas, marmosets, lemurs, squirrel monkeys, kittens, sloths, wombats and other small to moderately sized mammals to keep the enemy off balance.

I’ve decided to publicise this idea openly to the world rather than seeking my fortune from any particular country of military significance because I couldn’t bear the thought of having blood on my hands, whether it be human or any other small mammal that’s good at balancing acts.

Early example of camouflage 11/14/1917
http://research.archives.gov/description/530710