The US military is developing an “invisibility cloak” shielding its army troops from potential threats.
According to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the innovation would be made of a “smoke-like obscurant” and replace the controversial white phosphorous that has caused charred flesh in some soldiers.
The device is still in its early stages. Still, DAPRA has revealed that the “cloak” may be comprised of engineered material or liquid aerosol spray, adding that it “will be deployed in certain ways to allow one-way visibility through the plume.”
White phosphorous, a substance now employed by the military to produce a smoke screen, has come under fire after reports of “serious burns” lasting up to eight hours.
White phosphorous was seen being used in Syria in 2019 and “burning people to the bone,” including several children, according to online footage at the time. In the video, a little boy whose skin had eroded was brought to a hospital in Tal Tamr, near the border city of Ras al-Ayn. He can be heard screaming with his father to stop the burning before obtaining a dose of morphine from the medical team.
Although Turkey is barred from employing chemical weapons, Hamish de-Bretton Gordon, a British chemical weapons specialist, stated that the burns on the footage appeared compatible with white phosphorus when the country was bombing the Kurds.
In contrast to the present obscurants, which force personnel utilising them to wear respirators on the battlefield, DARPA’s new invention would be safe to not only come in contact with but also to breathe.
As part of the Coded Visibility (CV) programme, which started in July 2022 and will last for the next 4.5 years, numerous institutions from across the United States were chosen to conduct research, create, and test some obscurants.