WYOMING SURVIVAL: Defeating Thermal
Courtesy of Tango1Papa at his site, Wyoming Survival. And be sure to make your way out to WY for the RTO Course in June. -NCS
I wanted something that would defeat thermal devices that I could throw up real quick. My friend found used military ULCANS thermal netting from Old Grouch Military Surplus so we both decided to buy it. Below is a picture from their website showing how great it “supposedly” worked.
The netting came in a 3ft x 6ft section. They guy there told us to order 2 pieces and put in the comments not to cut it so we would get a 6 x 6 piece. We both did that and both of us got two 3×6 pieces……. so that cost me around $75 total.
The day I decided to test it the temperature was about 20 degrees. The picture below is my friend sitting on the ground with the netting draped over him.
The picture below is the same location as the one above using my Pulsar Axion Key XM30 thermal scope from 20 yds away. Can you tell thats a person??? Yeah me too.
The image below is from us putting the netting in some bushes with an airgap between my friend and the netting but also the netting between him and I. You can still tell something is there. This is still 20 yds away.
I decided to try something else. I wanted to get more space between my friend, the “thermal” netting, and I. He backed into this culvert at least 10ft from the netting and I was 50 yds on the outside away from the netting.
In the picture below is my buddy shining like a light bulb behind that “non-thermal” blocking netting from 50 yds.
So obviously I was pretty irritated. My friend had a piece of 4 x 6 cotton cloth with him. He wanted to try that against the thermal optic. We strung it up behind 2 bushes and he stood about 1.5 ft off the fabric. What do you know it blocked his thermal signature….. see below. I had him hold his hand up to show the heat difference.
I had to try the thermal netting one more time. I strung it up where the cotton cloth was and tried the same thing. As the 2 pics below show this netting is a waist of money.
Fast forward a few weeks. I still wasn’t done with my quest to have some sort of thermal blocking cover. I decided to go the cheap route. I’ve know emergency thermal blankets will block alot of heat but I also wanted some normal camouflage ability also. Amazon to the rescue! I bought the thermal blanket and some cheap digital desert netting. I just tied the four corners of the netting to the four corners of the blanket with tarred bank line. This setup cost me about $35.
We were basically in the same area as the first test. I had my friend just cover up with the new setup making sure no part of his body was showing. The 2 pics below show how well he blended into the natural environment. If you weren’t looking for him you would walk right by.
In this first video I messed up and was looking at the wrong spot. I could have kept it out of this post but this is probably the best video I could have posted. The reason I was looking at the wrong spot is because I COULDN’T tell where the hell my friend had been laying looking through the Thermal scope. He had been there also 5 minutes by the time I filmed both videos.
https://youtube.com/shorts/QdkTnpt7eEo?feature=share
This is the second video I took. At this point I knew exactly where he was lying. As you can see this setup completely blocks out all thermal signature even after 5 minutes under the blanket with it in direct contact with him.
https://youtube.com/shorts/-vr9nlQ-b-4?feature=share
Finally I had heard the netting I used had a huge IR signature. I had to test that also. The first picture below was of the netting with no IR light and 50% moon illumination. The second picture is with the IR illuminator on. Do you see a difference and does it look bright enough to matter? I will let you decide.
My final thoughts are that netting I bought is garbage. The cheap emergency blanket works 90% better that Government thermal netting.
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About the Author: NC Scout
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Good review and tests! Many thanks!
Excellent demo of what works and what doesn’t. I have been trying to figure out just what to buy to keep thermal heat signatures hidden. Now I know! Thanks.
Military camo netting is designed to scatter a heat signature, not block it. It is designed to suspend over vehicles or tents and scatter the thermal signature to the point where even though an enemy can tell something is there, they can’t PID what it is. It doesn’t sound like much, but even denying PID can prevent you from being targeted.
That said, those survival and GI casualty blankets work a lot better.
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Thanks for the review. Testing really does help make up one’s mind.
Excellent test. Thank you!
Try layering 3 layers of the ulcans netting to make a ghillie suit. In my testing and experience 3 layers is still lightweight, BREATHABLE, and very effective even at near bad breath distances. That’s with high refresh rate & resolution Pulsar and Trijicon thermal scopes. If you know the secret search terms you can easily find whole ULCANS net diamonds and hexagons for sale on flea bay for around $200-$300 that will make a bunch of ghillies or hide a lot of stuff from thermal, radar, and other multi-spectral electro optical sensors. Sophisticated threat actors (guess who) use more than long wave IR to find people they think are threats.
Your China mart camo net and thermal blanket may work great against thermal but you can’t move when using it, use it when it’s hot as balls in the summer, and I’ll bet it positively glows in UV and a couple other spectra that will be very hard (expensive) for you to test for much less mitigate.
Now do an article on UV brighteners in laundry detergents and substances that can remove or mitigate UV brightness and “shine” from your body & gear. Hint: look at sunscreens especially mineral based ones and anti UV protective coating compounds.
For an encore article after that go over GMTI SAR and what it means for finding, fixing, and servicing moving targets on a battlefield in any weather or light condition. They have it on all sorts of platforms now and it’s scary effective as proven in the first Gulf War even after the Iraqi’s turned Kuwait and southern Iraq into a blacked out oil soot overcast hellscape.
Concept – heavy duty thermal cloak.
Outer most garment, like a trench coat that is weather proofed n camo’d. Inner layer has the reflective thermal materials to keep the heat in.
Purpose – protect user from weather elements, while being camo’d and harder for thermal optics WHILE still being able to move through the environment such as thick brush
The amazion has cheap $40ish russian cloaks. Has anybody tried sewing a one of those thermal blankets to heavy duty canvass before?
Youre not moving very far under it.
The problem with sewing the blanket in the cloak is that if it has contact with the body it is going to conduct heat, negating the advantages that it would normally give against thermal.
From my understanding, moving around and trying to evade thermal don’t go together well either. You can’t perfectly match the thermal signature of the background, so when you move, even if you don’t look like a human moving, you’re going to be a moving blob that will look out of place. Hopefully if I’m wrong NC Scout or one of the other folks who know more than me about this subject will give better information.
This is correct.