This article was written by Brandon Smith and the included video was a joint project between Oath Keepers and Alt-Market

Asymmetric tactics rely on the idea of fighting smarter, rather than fighting directly, against a larger or more technologically advanced aggressor. It means turning your opponent's strengths into weaknesses.

For instance, if your opponent relies on the superiority of his tanks and armor, make him fight in the mountains where his armor is useless. If he relies on air superiority, make him sift through a thick canopy where his eye in the sky sees nothing, or make it dangerous for him to land and refuel such vehicles at all. If he relies on body armor for safety, make him fight uphill so that the extra weight wears him down. If his surveillance and security techniques are a little too sensitive and effective, create constant false positives, until he can no longer trust his own alert systems. And, if most of his weaponry and soldiers are heavily reliant on a particular piece of technology, make that technology useless in the field. Force your opponent to fight on fairer ground, where the man with the most skill and intelligence prevails rather than the man with the most million dollar toys.

There is no such thing as fool proof combat technology. There is a way to trick or defeat or survive ANY weapon and any enemy. Period.

Drones and thermal vision have been held up to the common citizenry for years as the end-all-be-all of combat and surveillance technology. I can't tell you how many times I've heard the claim that no one can hide from thermal imaging and that predator drones herald the end of free resistance to tyranny. I find this assertion to be rather absurd, considering militaries across the globe have already developed their own thermal evasion suits (which means it IS possible to hide from thermal vision) and drones seem to kill more innocent bystanders than actual enemy combatants. I will admit that thermal vision use is skyrocketing amongst military and police across the board, and this is because it is indeed effective to a point.

Thermal imaging and drones in the hands of a corrupt establishment make a couple of things very difficult for any resistance – First, you might be able to hide, but you won't be able to move freely without risk, especially in groups. Second, you might be able to act defensively, but never offensively. Advancing on an objective protected by thermal surveillance would be extremely difficult. Constantly being on the defensive takes the initiative away from those who want to fight back against tyranny. Without the ability to go on the offensive, you will inevitably lose. Hiding in a hole in the mountains for the rest of your life is not an option if you want your children and their children to experience liberty.

Today's combat reality is that of the digitized battlefield. All modern military units now rely on full spectrum surveillance, computer models, and real time data. Thermal vision is a cornerstone of this model because it is currently the best way to identify potential threats before they can act, rather than after they act. Unfortunately, there is no doubt this kind of surveillance power will be misused, and the spread of drones for domestic applications proves that the establishment's intention is to utilize thermal against the population, rather than in defense of the population. Therefore, thermal vision must be negated if people are to remain free. We might not be able to fight against misused drones directly, but we can make their primary advantage useless. Here is how it is possible to remove thermal vision as a threat, and thus nullify the primary strength of the drones (and other weapons) in our skies:

Thermal Vision And Drone Misconceptions

Now that you know it is more than possible for civilians to obtain thermal evasion, lets go over some of the most common misconceptions about thermal imaging and drone technology.

Building a suit that hides a person from thermal imaging is impossible?

Clearly, this is false, as we have shown in the video above. Add to this the fact that military units field their own thermal evasion suits (multi-spectral camouflage) for special purposes, and I think we've permanently buried the ludicrous assumption that a thermal evasion suit is a fruitless endeavor. Most existing suits, including those used by governments, boast a thermal reduction rating of 60% to 80%. It is important to recognize that there is currently no organization or company offering thermal evasion suits for widespread use by civilians. We have given the public free access to information on building their own suits if they wish, and we are offering professionally made suits for sale with a thermal reduction rating of 90% or more at Snakebite Tactical.

We made no attempt to hide “heat spots” within the tests in the above video. We want to make it clear that this is a 90% effective suit, which is more than enough for almost any application. Achieving 100% reduction at distances of 10 ft to 10 yards in a wearable suit is very difficult, and a person would still need to practice proper field craft in order to remain unseen. However, we believe our suit design more than meets the standards of currently issued military grade suits; suits which are not available to the public anyway.

Thermal imaging sees through walls?

This is movie-land nonsense. A thermal imager can see the heat you emit through a very thin wall if you are leaning against it, but remove your body from contact with the surface and the heat signature will disappear. Thermal imagers have a difficult time identifying stationary people through leaves and the branches of trees, let alone walls. As long as you are not in contact with the item, your heat will not be seen through the item.

Thermal vision sees through forests?

No. Not a chance. In fact, if your only goal is to hide, then a thick forest is the absolute best place to be if thermal surveillance is in use, even without a suit. If your plan is to advance on an objective, then the situation changes, but if you are a lone individual that just doesn't want to be found, staying in the woods and dense terrain away from people who might rat you out is your best bet. Apply a thermal suit to the scenario and now your are fully mobile without fear of detection.

You will never see a drone coming, so having a suit is meaningless anyway?

Gotta love this kind of fuzzy logic. The claim apparently assumes that drones simply fly miles above the Earth silently raining hellfire missiles down on random heat signatures on the ground without identification. This is not how drones operate.

Drones are mainly used as OVERWATCH for teams of men already on the ground. A drone might see your signature when you are not wearing a suit, but a drone pilot will not waste ordinance on you until you are identified as a viable target. Most of the successful strikes you see in the news and on YouTube are targets that were already lazed by a team on the ground (this is something the DoD rarely mentions, because they want to retain the mystic surrounding drones). The drone is then sent in to attack the target that the team identified. When a military unit comes into contact with an enemy, a drone may be sent in to observe and identify targets. This is a situation where thermal evasion is essential. If those targets throw on thermal evasion gear, the drone becomes a useless platform. If you are under threat by drones and ground opponents, you can leave the area at will without being traced, or you can advance and attack your aggressor without being betrayed by your own heat signature. Your suit does not need to be worn at all times in order to be useful.

I don't need a thermal evasion suit, I can just buy a thermal blanket or tarp at a fraction of the cost?

The first and most obvious advantage to a thermal evasion suit is that it CAN BE WORN. There is no existing tarp or thermal blanket system that can be worn against the human body and still hide that body from thermal imaging. All of these items conduct heat which can be seen almost as soon as you touch them. If a heat reflecting tarp was a practical working solution to thermal imaging, then you would see hundreds if not thousands of videos on the web proving their effectiveness and governments would not be keeping their own suits such a secret. The reality is, these items are only useful if you plan to stretch them out above you without physical contact, and stay in one place without moving. They are highly defensive in nature and severely limited in their application.

We have developed the very first thermal evasion system available to the public that can be worn for long periods of time and that also provides effective visual camouflage. Our suit works as a ghillie as well as a thermal evasion tool, meaning, it works in thermal, and in visible light. A thermal cloak offers near total 360 degree coverage against thermal imaging devices in the air and on the ground while the person is also mobile. Meaning, instead of constantly hiding from the enemy and being on the defensive (a losing strategy), you can advance on the enemy if you wish without detection. There is no comparison whatsoever in the level of application between a thermal blanket and a thermal suit.

This does not mean a suit solves all your problems. If you walk through an open field and start break-dancing, someone will see you. A thermal suit does not necessarily hide blatant movement by the wearer. You still need to follow proper field craft methods including the use of cover and concealment. Add to this the thermal reduction properties of the suit, and you are much less likely to be detected, even under heightened scrutiny.

I don't need a thermal suit, I can just hide in the city amongst the crowds and blend in? 

I'm sure there are situations when operating in a city might be called for, but frankly, the idea is extraordinarily ill conceived when one considers the surveillance grids being put in place in most major metropolitan areas. Thermal is not your worst enemy in the city. Try CCTV networks with facial and biometric recognition. Try numerous possible collaborators and quislings in a city environment (known for more passive and subservient populations permanently attached to the establishment umbilical cord) who might point the finger at you. The city is a BAD place to be under almost any circumstance that results in crisis and lost liberty, and probably the worst place to be if you are trying to avoid observation and surveillance.

That said, watch almost any police chopper thermal footage in a city and tell me the person being chased was better off without a thermal suit. Imagine you are being chased for simply being a proponent of liberty. Imagine that one day you wake up in the middle of your home city a designated criminal. Would you rather have a thermal evasion suit, or, do you plan to outrun the chopper?

Mud will hide your heat signature?

No, it will not. At least not for more than a minute, and it better be some thick friggin' mud. Despite what Arnold Schwarzenegger may have taught you, heat transfers through mud just as it does through most other materials.

Drones will find you with LIDAR if they can't see you with thermal vision? 

LIDAR is a form of laser based radar which is bounced off surfaces to create a 3D map of a large area. I'm not sure exactly where the idea came from that drones use LIDAR for personnel detection, but this is simply not so, at least not currently. LIDAR is being tested by the DoD and private contractors for personnel detection using GROUND based 360 degree units, and the effective range of these experimental units is rather limited. Aerial LIDAR is used for mapping of terrain. The complexity of ground based objects (think in terms of millions of objects in any given field of view) makes personnel tracking from the air all but impossible. Ground based LIDAR also requires a recognizable human shape at close range in order to “alert” on an intruder, which means the ThermTac suit (which removes normal human shape) would only HELP in preventing detection. From my research as of 2015, LIDAR for surveillance often suffers from numerous false positives, which means it is a very weak system for tracking personnel. Thermal vision is a far greater threat than LIDAR.

Even if you have a suit that blocks your body heat, you can still be tracked by your footprints?

Under perfect conditions and the use of a sensitive thermal imager on the ground, your footprints MIGHT be visible using a ground based unit right after you imprint them, but it is still unlikely you will be found. Quick thermal imprints (caused by footsteps) disappear within seconds, and are difficult if not impossible to pick out from any distance beyond a few yards. Rubber and plastic soled shoes do not in most cases transfer very much heat into the ground, and the theory that crushed grass releases more heat in thermal imaging is utter nonsense. Too many ideas about thermal imaging are drawn from television and movies, which greatly embellish the capabilities of such devices. If footprints were an effective way to track people using thermal, then Search and Rescue units (many have access to excellent thermal devices) would have numerous examples of this along with numerous success stories (these examples do not exist).

One legitimate danger involving footprints occurs when a very large number of people (small groups are not an issue) travel together in single file. This constant imprinting on the same path by multiple footfalls can indeed leave a residual trail that can be found several minutes later, enough time to be tracked by a thermal imager.

Thermal evasion suits will help terrorists?

As stated in the video, the world's worst terrorist groups are often trained by our own governments and covert intelligence agencies. If covert agencies have access to thermal evasion techniques, then it only follows that so do the people they train. I have no doubt that we will be accused of aiding terrorists by releasing this information, because that is really the only recourse the establishment has to try to stop the use and spread of thermal cloaks (or they will claim that the suit is a scam and doesn't actually work. Of course, people will be able to test this for themselves). They will have to try to shame people into refusing to adopt thermal evasion as a means of defense. Trust me, I've seen this kind of propaganda used against people merely for talking about methods that MIGHT work. Read any military forum where someone discusses thermal evasion, and invariably a dozen henpecking statists will ask them if they are “with ISIS or Al-Qaeda” to shut them up.

Self-defense is an inborn right, not a privilege granted by arbitrary authority. You do not need permission to obtain means of defense against a threat, even if that threat has thermal imaging at his disposal and a license from the state to kill you. Our thermal suit design is a culmination of three years of tireless effort.  We believe the information belongs in the hands of the citizenry, not only in the hands of governments and those they train. The greater threat to the common good is a lack of knowledge that makes free people weak and vulnerable. The goal of this project is to remove a clear weakness in the American people. If you are not informed, and not prepared, then you will never be secure. Some people would have you believe that thermal imaging and drones are for your safety. We say YOU are the only person that can be trusted to provide for your own safety. If anything, thermal eyes and lurking drones present a more intense danger to you and your freedom than any terrorists they are supposedly intended to fight against.

For more information on thermal evasion, check out some of our essays at Snakebite Tactical.

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Why American Civilians Need Thermal Evasion Suits

By Brandon Smith

http://www.snakebitetactical.com/essays.html

Why has it taken so long for practical thermal evasion methods to be introduced to the civilian market?  There are multiple reasons.  First, many average people unfortunately have little to no concern over thermal vision based weapons systems.  They believe that all of these weapons reside in the hands of governments, governments which supposedly have the best interests of the citizenry at heart.  Why should they develop or purchase a thermal evasion system when the “good guys” have all the thermal toys?  This is blind faith in an establishment which has not earned our trust...

Sadly, with the advent of numerous privacy and liberty crushing programs, it is safe to say that not all governments if any governments have the best interests of the public at heart.  In fact, many governments today are training to subdue and control their respective populations rather than protect them.

Also, thermal vision devices are now widely available to any person, almost anywhere.  Criminal and extremist elements can obtain thermal vision as easily as you and I can.  If you are not worried about government corruption and overreach, then you should at least be concerned by the growth of organizations like ISIS.

Second, the learning curve is immense.  One must be willing to learn a considerable amount of thermal physics basics, as well as have an engineering sense which allows for creative problem solving.  Most of all, patience is required to complete the endeavor.

Third, the cost of developing a wearable thermal suit can be prohibitive.  Thermal scopes suitable enough to test such a product run around $3000 minimum.  The cost of testing various materials can also be very high, and the process is time consuming (three years collectively for those of us here at Snakebite Tactical).  Add to this the cost of production (the labor required to fabricate a working model), from prototype to final suit, and many people, even those highly motivated, simply don't have the time or the money to make thermal evasion possible.

But, isn't there a market for this, you ask?  Wouldn't some company out there somewhere realize that hundreds of thousands if not millions of survival advocates and preppers could have significant demand for thermal evasion?  Why hasn't anyone in the business world pursued this?

That's easy; the people generally holding positions of authority in development in the business world desire niche markets and easy profits, but, they also benefit greatly from the existing system through government contracts (state and federal) as well as political partnerships. For the most part, these people have no interest whatsoever in inventing or distributing products that would diminish the power of that system, at least, none of them want to be the first to distribute these items.

Fourth, the majority of modern military hardware and machinery now relies on the integration of thermal systems.  The fact is, standardized military strategies have abandoned smarter asymmetric tactics in exchange for technological shortcuts.  The general public seems to have little to no clue whatsoever how dependent the military is on thermal vision as we enter this new era of techno-warfare.   Often, perimeter and security sweeps applied by soldiers in the field are done for the most part with thermal surveillance.  No major hotspots, and those soldiers move on.

Drones are even more reliant on thermal imagery, being that they often require target recognition by soldiers on the ground (using thermal/laser ranging gear), then they must find and strike those targets using their own thermal devices from vast distances which narrow the field of view down to nothing.  If a drone switches from wide view with all the thermal noise involved and looks through its magnified thermal lens (kind of like looking through a straw) and finds no man shaped hot spots, then there is no target.  Period.  A drone operator will not waste ordinance randomly in the hopes of getting a lucky hit on a target that may or may not still be there.

If a company does produce a thermal evasion suit (a few around the world have done this, though any information on how their suits work is hard to come by), that company will without a doubt sell the design to the military under contract.  To release an actual working thermal suit openly to the public essentially negates billions upon billions of dollars in military machinery and training.  The bottom line is, armies around the globe used to KNOW that thermal vision is a dependable force multiplier.  Today with the release of the ThermTac Ghost Suit, they have no clue who is hiding where.  They have just been kicked back to the era of Vietnam-style combat environments with all the doubt and uncertainty of past wars.  Needless to say, most companies and inventors do not have the balls to undercut and make obsolete the technology of the military industrial complex regardless of the extent of their profit motive.

The question is, is it fundamentally wrong then to make thermal evasion available to common people?  If you understand who the “enemy” really is, then the answer is a clear “no”.

Recent documents released concerning ISIS show that many terrorist groups are funded, trained, and often armed by covert intelligence agencies under orders from our own governments.  These groups are already well aware of how to evade thermal vision if they wish, which is why our military has been so unsuccessful in subduing them in foreign theaters.  Meaning, our thermal evasion suit cannot aid terrorists if they are already training by our own government.

The primary application of thermal vision is to undermine asymmetric combat methods.  That is to say, thermal vision was put into military use as a means to counteract the advantages smaller guerrilla units have of maneuver and surprise.  Asymmetric methods are the only methods left available to the citizenry to stop the rise of tyrannical political conditions.  If constitutional freedoms were entirely erased tomorrow (as numerous pieces of legislation and executive orders give the establishment license to do), the public would invariably be forced to fight back, and fight back using asymmetrics.

Thermal evasion puts at least some power squarely back into the hands of the citizenry where it belongs.   At the very least, it levels the fighting field to the point that a determined population has a chance to defend themselves.  Without thermal evasion, the odds of success diminish drastically.

The concept of the thermal “suit” should also be distinguished from existing ideas of thermal “tents” or “tarps”.  Shelter-style thermal evasion products are useful for certain applications, and Snakebite tactical plans to offer items like this with our own innovations.  However, a thermal tarp is NOT useful for anything beyond sheltering in place, which is why they are so easy to make compared to a thermal suit.  These products cannot be physically handled or worn around the body, otherwise, they heat up almost immediately.  Their only purpose is to hide a stationary person who has no direct contact with the tarp, a person who has no plans to move anywhere or do anything tactically proactive.

A thermal evasion suit is designed specifically for those who wish to be mobile, and for those who want thermal coverage at ALL times at 360 degrees of security, including during operational activities, not only during rest and observation periods.

A thermal evasion suit is a tool, like any other tool.  We at Snakebite Tactical intend it to be a tool for defense.  We believe fully in the cause of liberty for all peoples, and we believe that thermal evasion is just as essential in maintaining that liberty as the right to bear arms is.  We hope that this contribution to the liberty movement as a whole will help turn the tide of tyranny back, and give Americans a chance to rejuvenate the constitutional principles that once made our society honorably unique in the pages of history.