while we are discussing tanks....

[JC Carbonel]

He had military equipment with completely IR-steath military in Venus Prime. They had some kind of tank to store heat generated during running and they had to vent this heat after operation... Do you know if this kind of closed-circuit hear exchange was actually tested on AFVs ?

JCC

[Hobbes]

While it's theoretically possible, I expect it'd be very hard to build. You'd need tons of coolant to store the energy, and even then it'd be hard to get an exact match between hull temperature an ambient temperature.  

[nev]

Not heard of that, but there are photos in this months MM of an old Challenger "stealth" tank.  The idea obviously never worked very well.

[rallymodeller]

In the "Colonial Marines Technical Manual", it is said the the APC's the USCM uses in "Aliens" have radiators and coolers under the skin to break up the vehicle's IR signature, just like camouflage does for visual. A system like that could be made closed-circuit, with the hot by-products from the cooling patches driving the radiators, and so forth.