Low Visibility Decoy Flare

Low visibility rotary aircraft decoys are needed to protect vehicles against heat seeking missile attacks without illuminating the target which exposes the aircraft to small arms fire and potentially compromising the mission. The novel approach to this challenge is to produce a decoy which emits only in the bands of interest utilizing techniques such as containment and composition selection to optimize performance from the limited volume of existing dispensers. Reactive materials will be used to generate heat which will produce a hot cloud of molten metal and hot CO2 gas neither of which will produce a visible signature, but will produce the IR signal desired.