Russia claims to have developed new ‘invisibility cloak’ tech to hide soldiers 

Putin’s forces will soon have new camouflage gear that can completely hide them from heat-detecting lenses, Russian contractors say.

While thermal ‘invisibility cloaks’ are nothing new, a murky company calling itself HiderX claims to have cracked a major flaw which allowed them to be spotted by keen-eyed operatives.

Soldiers have a range of options to conceal themselves to the naked eye, such as using the cover of night or wearing ghillie suits mimicking foliage or snow.

These techniques can be thwarted by infra-red cameras and other thermal imaging equipment which detect body heat.

It can be blocked by reflective fabrics similar to space blankets, which have been worked into cloaks and suits for battlefield use in recent decades – and are in use on both sides of the war in Ukraine.

But these too have limitations: even inanimate objects emit a small amount of heat radiation, so ‘cloaked’ soldiers can still show up as distinctive silhouettes.

‘We have learned how to mask an object from a thermal imager, hiding its thermal signature – our products are successfully used in special forces.’ HiderX told state-owned Russian news agency Tass.

‘At the same time, when a soldier puts on a camouflage suit, a raincoat, etc., he is in any case visible as an unnatural object. Thermal imagers see how his silhouette shimmers.’

The company says it is in the final stages of testing a material that ‘seemed to blur the silhouette’ and that the product will be ‘completed by the end of January’.

It shared footage on Telegram which it claims shows ‘test results’ from ‘ground-based detection equipment and drones with thermal cameras’.

The firm says the technology involves ‘coating fabrics’ with a compound, but is refusing to disclose any more details.

None of its footage or claims can be independently verified.

While its testing videos appeared to show effective results when the cloaks were worn by stationary soldiers, they were much easier to spot when moving.

There is also no indication of whether the technology holds up in realistic battlefield situations.

For example, many cloaks of this type become ineffective when users get too warm through physical exertion.

HiderX claims some of its new equipment will weigh only 350g and can fit into a pocked when folded up.

There does not appear to be any public record of contracts between HiderX and the Russian military or any other forces in the world, though the firm claims to provide 400 thermal cloaking outfits a month.

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