Most modern vehicles today use IR technology to track everything from hostile personnel to rolling armor, especially once the sun sets. Since almost all modern vehicles nowadays exude at least some sort of IR signature, this type of tracking is extremely commonplace and can be found on everything from armored personnel carriers, tanks to unmanned aerial vehicles. To become invisible in today’s battlefield, you don’t have to be invisible to the naked eye – you just need to be invisible to the sensors that employ IR.
That’s where BAE Systems’ Adaptiv technology comes in. The whole thing works by using hexagonal “pixels” that are about as large as your fist that are cooled or heated depending on what effect the operator wants to achieve. With Adaptiv, you can make a tank look like something else on IR and even make it disappear entirely, which make it ideal for covert operation applications.
Source: BAE Systems