“…SOCOM is asking for proposals that’d “reduce the warfighter’s facial signature†in marine environments, to minimize their risk of heat-based detection by infrared sensors or motion-based spotting via electro-optical surveillance.
Sounds crazy, but they just might have a shot. In 2008, the Army Military Research Office boasted that they were a mere two or three years away from developing metamaterials that could deflect light to conceal a given object.
Since then, experts at various institutions have made impressive progress. Researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas have shown off an invisibility cloak that harnesses the “mirage effect,†defense company BAE Systems has developed a system that renders vehicles invisible to the entire infrared spectrum and physicists from St. Andrews University broke new ground with a meta-material that comes even closer to all-out undetectability.”