Russia has unveiled a new “camouflage suit” to hide its soldiers from Ukrainian forces, months after Ukraine developed lightweight “invisibility cloaks” for its fighters.
Russia is developing the suit to give the wearer “perfect protection against thermal imaging equipment” used by Ukrainian troops, state news agency Tass reported on Friday, citing Russian company HiderX.
The fabrics used in the camouflage suit are coated with an unspecified compound, blurring the wearer’s silhouette, Tass said.
“Tests of the latest suit are ongoing,” HiderX said. “Work on the product is planned to be completed by the end of January.”
The company added, “We are developing a fundamentally new product,” according to the Tass report. “This is a completely Russian technology.”
It is not clear whether the suit will be used by Russian forces in Ukraine and when it will be introduced into Moscow’s military. Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
HiderX/Tass
The nearly two years of war in Ukraine has spurred innovation within Moscow’s and Kyiv’s militaries, from drones to survival gear. Forces operating in the dark, using equipment designed to function in little to no light, may give one side an edge in the attritional war, which shows few signs of coming to an end anytime soon.
In early October, Ukrainian developers told Newsweek that a team in the country was already capable of producing 150 “invisibility cloaks” per month and was preparing to expand to mass production. The clothing was designed to shroud Ukrainian soldiers from Russian thermal imaging technology.
The devices were then discussed by Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister for new technologies, who said the “invisibility cloaks in fairy tales” had become a reality in Ukraine.
The cloak “blocks heat radiation,” making Ukrainian soldiers invisible to Moscow’s thermal imaging devices, he said. “It will help our soldiers work effectively during the night.”
But the cloak “cannot be used during rapid movement, which is accompanied by excessive heat release and minor leakage through the ventilation holes in the cloak,” Maxim Boryak, part of the team developing the cloak under the Brave1 research program, told Newsweek this past October.
In a Telegram post, Fedorov said the cloaks would likely be used by Ukrainian snipers and special forces in combat missions against Russian forces.
The design “is compact and light,” weighing less than 2½ kilograms (5½ pounds), he said. The cloak is resistant to extreme temperatures, such as snow. It also can protect its wearers from sun exposure, Fedorov added, sharing a video he said showed a “finished sample that has successfully been tested in the field.”
Russia’s HiderX said its designs were already in use among Russia’s special forces. The new design blurs the silhouette of Russian soldiers rather than identifying the fighter as an “unnatural object.”
Russia’s current methods of hiding its fighters from thermal imaging in Ukraine are largely based on keeping the body heat in, which “clearly demonstrates its inefficiency” over long periods, the company said.
“The material and technology applied to the fabric make it possible to achieve a minimum weight of 350 grams,” the company said, according to Tass.
“We use a different technology—shielding,” HiderX said.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.