ABSTRACT
A promising approach to the developments of passive countermeasures against imaging infrared seekers is airborne obscurants. The effect of target and background temperatures on the thermal obscuring potentials of different mineral dusts as airborne obscurants was studied. The target temperatures and background temperatures were within the following ranges (50-200oC) and (18-35oC) respectively. The airborne smoke powder was generated pneumatically within a designed smoke tunnel equipped with means for measuring the surrounding ambient temperature. The thermal obscuring potential of the smoke was tested by using a thermal camera attached to a video recorder and a data processing system. The effect of smoke on the attenuation of infrared radiation emitted from a the target was recorded, analyzed and explained.