Is the army testing an invisible tank? The British Ministry of
Defence captured the attention of the global media in October
2007, when it announced that it had successfully made a tank
invisible to the human eye. Although the British government is
keeping the details to itself, it released the basic idea behind
the technology. The tank is coated in silicon, effectively
turning the vehicle into a highly reflective movie screen. Video
cameras positioned on the tank take real-time footage of the
surrounding environment, and projectors show the images on the
surface of the tank. To observers at secret trials conducted by
the British army in October 2007, the only thing visible was the
images of the terrain projected onto the tank. The British
military plans on having the tanks battlefield-ready by 2012,
but this technique may be short-lived due to some drawbacks.
Cameras or projectors may fail, and from different angles, the
tank may be visible. It's a somewhat clumsy and difficult way of
rendering an object inv