Vigil Autonomya defense technology company based in Austin, Texas, has introduced Air Covera system of autonomous camouflage designed to make it difficult to detect military vehicles, equipment and personnel.
The proposal consists of deploy a cover over the element to be protected and move it with it without having to disassemble and reassemble the camouflage. According to the manufacturer, it can accompany the vehicle during its movements and is managed through a program that allows configure its position, orientation and mode of operationso autonomy does not exclude the supervision of an operator
The protection proposed by Air Cover is aimed at two fingerprints that allow vehicles to be detected and identified. The infrared thermal signature is the radiation pattern associated with its temperature that thermal cameras capture, and the radar signature It depends on how it reflects the waves emitted by a radar. The cover is intended disguise the thermal contrast with the environment and modify the radar response to make identification more difficult, also using synthetic aperture radars (SAR)capable of generating images of the terrain. Vigil does not detail the materials used or how much those signals would reduce.
The manufacturer offers three configurations for Air Cover. The individual for a soldier uses a mesh of 2 × 2 metersthe one intended for units measures 3 × 3 meters and the version for vehicles and equipment reaches 10 × 10 meterswith surfaces of four, nine and one hundred square metersrespectively.
It also has two modes of operation that allow you to choose between hiding the objective or trying to deceive surveillance systems. He hide mode deploys coverage to manage thermal and radar signatures, and the decoy mode uses temporary active lift to position an Air Cover with a given signature away from the protected element and divert attention to another position.
Among the planned applications are the coverage of vehicles, personnel and equipment during movements, resupply or maintenance. The possibility of repositioning the cover or assigning it to another vehicle makes it easy to adapt the protection to the needs of each operation.
The development status of Air Cover is not specified in the information published by the manufacturer nor has an availability date been announced. In any case, Vigil Autonomy is not the first company to handle this camouflage concept. Boeing It has also proposed using drones coordinated with screens and panels that heat or cool to hide vehicles and people, follow their movements or create decoys in another position. The proposal appears in a patent application published in February 2025, although there is no evidence that it is being developed.