Inventor touts new, stealthy camouflage - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Inventor touts new, stealthy camouflage

SAN DIEGO — It sounds like something out of Hollywood, but an inventor is designing camouflage that changes its color and patterns like a chameleon.

The fabric’s inventor told a San Diego conference last month that stealthy camouflage is only a few years away from outfitting service members — and even helping hide ground combat vehicles, fighter jets and ships.

The concept of adaptive camouflage remains in development but — if proven to work as advertised — may grab attention from military services interested in improving concealment on the battlefield.

The man behind the fabric is Guy Cramer, president and CEO of HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp. He holds several trademarks and patents for cammie patterns and devices, including a positive/negative ion generator he developed that may help in changing the look of a uniform quickly and easily.

“The chameleon is very good at changing its color and pattern,” Cramer told an audience May 4 at ADS Warrior Expo-West. “We are getting closer.”

Stealthy camouflage requires submicroscopic nanotechnologies, so the material “is always changing color and pattern,” he said. “Ideally, that would be your end result. We’re not there yet.”

The idea, he said, is to “take ‘smart’ materials that can actually change from one area, like color and shape, to change the overall look of what you are wearing.”

The services are watching.

“The Marine Corps is interested in the capability and in monitoring the technological development ... in conjunction with the Army,” said 2nd Lt. Agustin Solivan, a Marine Corps Systems Command spokesman in Quantico, Va. “Adaptive camouflage is not yet technologically mature enough to integrate into our current war-fighting equipment. When it does become more mature, the Marine Corps will definitely consider it.”

Staci-Jill Burnley, a spokeswoman with the Army’s Program Executive Officer Soldier at Fort Belvoir, Va., said officials cannot comment because the Army is in the midst of pursuing a new contract for improved camouflage design for woodland, arid and transitional environments. The Navy’s Clothing and Textile Research Facility in Natick, Mass., did not return calls for comment.

Some details still unseen

Cramer didn’t say how he’ll take smart materials and make them change color and shape, telling the crowd to wait a few months.

While a few others in the industry are vying to develop similar technologies, HyperStealth hopes to get there first. The company is developing the concept along with ADS Inc.; Cramer said he will present more details at the ADS Warrior Expo-East in Virginia Beach, Va., on July 14-15.

The company for more than two decades has worked on developing patterns for 38 U.S. and foreign militaries and law enforcement agencies, and outfitting 2 million uniforms and even MiG-29 fighter jets with its patterns.

Most recently, the company has developed SMARTCAMO — the woodland to desert pattern — with the Canadian military and has an ongoing project that, theoretically, uses sensors to change a hybrid camouflage pattern between the woodland and desert designs.

“Everything would be done automatically, but it would require a power source,” Cramer said, adding that SMARTCAMO is “about six months from being field tested.”

While not providing details, Cramer estimated that stealthy camouflage wouldn’t cost much more than existing uniforms. He predicted that the next generation of stealthy cammies may be cheaper than SMARTCAMO, which costs about $1,000 per uniform.

And it’s not just for clothing. Adaptive technology, Cramer said, could change the look — as well as alter the infrared and ultraviolet signatures — of not just clothing but of a destroyer or F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, for example, to avoid detection and identification.