Signature Management Textiles

The prolific nature of Advanced Battlefield and Ground surveillance radar (BSR/GSR) in military markets is driving the need to develop new methods of reducing infantry forces’ radar cross section (RCS) in effort to avoid detection and more freely move throughout the battlespace. One approach to combat the growing threat of BSR/GSR surveillance is through the development of advanced textiles that provide optimal signature management. Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) and Clemson University’s Textile group propose to develop wearable technology with lightweight, conformal textiles that utilize spectral attenuation, absorption, refraction and scattering effects providing isotropic blending into electromagnetic (EM) background mitigating detection by GSR of soldier movement in the battlefield. The proposed approach leverages radar EM absorbing/reflecting techniques with printed circuits and extending to flexible, wearable materials to implement a solution that manages areas of absorption and reflection. Absorbing all radar signals will create a “black hole” that can also be detected, just as a material that reflects all radar creates a signature. The goal is to develop a garment that camouflages the soldier to blend into the background spectrally by controlling the sections of reflected, refracted, and absorbed signals to form Signature Management Textiles.