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Monday, December 30, 2013

Hiding from Drones (Updated)

The Drone Survival Guide offers some tips on hiding from drones:

Drones are equipped with extremely powerful camera’s which can detect people and vehicles at an altitude of several kilometers. Most drones are equipped with night vision, and/or infrared vision camera’s, so-called FLIR sensors. These can see human heat signatures from far away, day or night. However there are ways to hide from drones.


1.  Day camouflage: Hide in the shadows of buildings or trees.

2.  Use thick forests as natural camouflage or use camouflage nets.

3.  Night camouflage: hide inside buildings or under protection of trees or foliage. Do not use flashlights or vehicle spot lights, even at long distances. Drones can easily spot this during night missions.

4.  Heat camouflage: Emergency blankets (so-called space blankets) made of Mylar can block infrared rays. Wearing a space blanket as a poncho at night will hide your heat signature from infrared detection. Also in summer when the temperature is between 36°C and 40°C, infrared camera’s cannot distinguish between body and its surroundings.
  
5.  Wait for bad weather. Drones cannot operate in high winds, smoke, rainstorms or heavy weather conditions.

6.  No wireless communication. Using mobile phones or GPS based communication will possibly compromise your location.

7.  Spreading reflective pieces of glass or mirrored material on a car on a roof will confuse the drone’s camera.

8.  Decoys. Use mannequins or human-sized dolls to mislead the drone’s reconnaissance.
(H/t Ol' Remus and the Woodpile Report).

Update: 1/3/2014: Based on the comments below, I decided to poke around the internet a bit more to see what I could find on defeating thermal imaging systems. This 2009 article (advertisement?) at Super Circuits discusses the basics of thermal imaging, but doesn't really get into weaknesses of the systems.

This article from E-How discusses some techniques for camouflaging yourself from thermal imaging. Some points:
1. Conceal yourself behind shards of glass. Glass is opaque to thermal imaging, but carrying around a pane of glass in the jungle is not terribly practical. In junk yards or urban settings, a broken window or shards of glass can break up the shape of a human body and make a person in a ghillie suit harder to detect.


2. Throw a blanket over yourself. Afghan guerrillas carry thick woolen blankets to help defeat thermal imaging. A thermal blanket works the same way. By covering themselves with a layer of insulation, the heat is blocked so that it doesn't radiate. This only serves as a temporary concealment as the heat builds beneath the blanket, but may work long enough to conceal during a quick TI scan. Partially covering the ghillie suit may also obscure the outline of the body enough to deceive TI equipment.


3. Hide next to warm stones that still hold heat from the day. The extra warm spots will confuse the thermal imagers. Vent pipes near buildings, thick walls or any source of heat can help obscure your thermal outline. Hiding in hollows or caves or piling irregular mounds of earth over you may make you look like a brush pile that's warm inside. Most brush piles emit a little heat that confuses an infrared image to the observer. The trick with terrain blocking is to make yourself look less like a human.
 Some additional thoughts at Steve Quayle's blog, including:

IR is not Xray, Hollywood be damned-it cannot detect a differential heat image through common solid materials, plastic film (black or otherwise) being an exception. However, a good imager system can see through holes in a masking material ("IR masking" camo net). And if you are inside a dumpster, body heating the bad guy's side, he can "see" the hot spot on the dumpster's outside. But if you are not leaning (heating) against that side, he can't "see you". Your body heat will not be detected behind most readily available unholed blinding materials if you are not differentially warming/cooling those materials or allowing your own IR to reflect off of something behind/over you. BUT, if the shielding materials are alien to the surroundings, the material itself will probably stand out. See below.

Glass will not allow your THERMAL image to transmit (pass) through; same as the dumpster scenario. The lenses of IR imagers are made of exotic nonglass materials because of this.
The same basic techniques discussed above appear in this Modern Survival Blog article on the topic.

Update (6/6/2014): Tin Hat Ranch also has an article on hiding from drones/thermal imaging that you may find interesting. (H/t Active Response Training).

5 comments:

  1. 6. No wireless communication. Using mobile phones or GPS based communication will possibly compromise your location.

    Not using a cell phone is not good enough. Even having the cell phone turned off may not be good enough. The only safe way to deal with a cell phone is to not possess one.

    7. Spreading reflective pieces of glass or mirrored material on a car on a roof will confuse the drone’s camera.

    I seriously doubt this. Spend some time looking at drone video on YouTube, especially the kind where the bad guys ultimately get zapped, to better understand the capabilities of drones.

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    Replies
    1. Drones pose a significant problem is a martial law/civil war scenario, and I'm not sure there are any good solutions. For instance, I recently posted some comments from Max Velocity's blog that indicated that emergency blankets only block about 80% of heat, and have to be held away from the body, to be effective (thus, his developing a tarp). Visual camouflage is largely ineffective against thermal imaging systems, and so on.

      The basic problem with dealing with drones is detecting the drone. I remember seeing a book on building a backscatter radar using (now obsolete) televisions, and relying on the reflection of signals from distant TV stations. The book was for amateur astronomers to detect meteors, but it might work for aircraft. I don't know. Frequency scanners may also help detect signals from a drone, although just detecting the signal won't necessarily tell you it is a drone. Detection remains a problem.

      Even after detecting the drone, then what? The presumption is that you won't be attacked unless you look like a hostile. Openly carrying firearms is a big giveaway. Activities may also be a giveaway--e.g., a group of men all loading into a truck in the middle of the night. Growing an "unauthorized garden" in a time of food shortages may also qualify. So, the more effective tactic here would be to look innocuous rather than attempt to rely on camouflage to hide. Of course, if you have been targeted for some other reason, looking innocuous won't be any protection.

      Electronic countermeasures may be of some use. Even fairly weak GPS jammers can screw up airport landing systems. Perhaps such systems can be used to mess with a drone. Or perhaps jamming other signals. Just don't be anywhere near such equipment when the Wild Weasels come calling! Again, though, I'm sure that military drones have countermeasures.

      Anyone else have suggestions on dealing with drones?

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    2. In my very limited experience (playing with a friend's thermal camera for a few minutes), regular window glass blocks a thermal imager, assuming no contact with the glass (no conduction) and regular body heat. Point a thermal camera at a window and you will see your own thermal reflection, not what is on the other side of the glass. Of course, running around trying to hide under a large sheet of glass is not practical.

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    3. Thinking more on the subject, the broken glass may have some impact on a laser designator. I would be interesting to see some tests on this.

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