ACTIVE MULTISPECTRAL CAMOUFLAGE PANELS Kamil Zuber*1, Simon Firth2, Peter Murphy1 Vivienne Wheaton 1Future Industries Institute, 2UniSA Ventures Maritime Division University of South Australia Defence Science and Technology Group Mawson Lakes Boulevard, Mawson Lakes SA 506 Lorimer Street, Fishermans Bend, Victoria 3207 [Kamil.Zuber, Simon.Firth, Peter.J.Murphy]@unisa.edu.au
[email protected] *corresponding author Not being seen ‘in the field’ or in other words, a combat not as effective if used outside of the one environment they are situation, can provide a critical advantage towards survivability and matched for. By contrast, what we propose is an active protecting military assets. Current camouflage technologies and multispectral camouflage system, designed to sample spectral approaches are fixed and unchangeable post-manufacture, and signatures of ambient environments and then display an even when designed for terrain-specific environments, remain optimally background-matched pattern to a ‘camouflage array’ limited in their desired effect. We have developed active, of cells affixed on a military platform. Herein we present the multispectral camouflage panels based on conducting polymers that latest stage of the development of the hardware component - provide for visual and Near Infrared (NIR) reflectivity to adapt (in the camouflage panels. real-time) to the ever-changing natural environment. This will furnish the material basis that is fundamental to an automatically II. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN adapting, bespoke camouflage solution for protecting military vehicles and assets. There are several aspects to consider when designing an effective camouflage strategy. Firstly, there is the survivability Keywords—camouflage, active camouflage, multispectral, onion model [1] which defines ‘layers of protection’ in the concealment field from ‘not being there’ (added more recently) to ‘not being seen’ to ‘not being targeted’, etc.