German invents radar-camouflaging paint

“How on earth does the man do it?” Essen asks. Nickel started looking into radio shield paints during the cold war. A Yugoslavian friend working at his country’s consulate in West Berlin introduced Nickel to weapons experts, including an American living in a villa in West Berlin. At a certain point, people interested in Nickel’s special paint started contacting him. In early 2002 he received a visit from an Iraqi who told him that the government of Saddam Hussein was looking for ways to hide its fortifications from U.S. air patrols. In 2007 the Chinese started knocking on his door. Representatives of a Shanghai-based company called G.S. Holding told Nickel that they were “very interested in your product” and promised him profits in the “huge Chinese market.” He says, however, that he prefers “reasonable people from my own country.”

The Germans have known about Nickel’s paint for a long time. In 2004 Nickel sent the first sample of his paint to FGAN, whose main client is the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces. The effectiveness of AR 1, experts at the FGAN told him, went “well beyond the level we have been able to achieve with similar paint samples.” In 2005 the FGAN had a Unimog — an off-road vehicle manufactured by Mercedes — coated with Nickel’s paint, and then it presented the shielded vehicle to defense experts. Delegations from Singapore, the UAE and the Netherlands came to see the vehicle. The Bundeswehr showed little interest. In July 2007 Nickel complained to the German Defense Ministry. “I should point out to you,” he wrote, “that various foreign countries have now expressed an interest in buying the paint.” Officials from the ministry then contacted Essen at FGAN. “They called me and wanted me to confirm that Nickel was a nut,” Essen recounts. “But, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to help them out.” Since then the tone has changed, and Nickel has been receiving very friendly mail from Rheinmetall, a defense contractor that has called his product “truly impressive,” from radar shield manufacturer Tec-Knit, which wrote that it was “excited about your shielding effectiveness,” from the Defense Ministry itself and from the Bundeswehr Technical Center for Protective and Special Technologies (WTD 52). Essen plans to present the new shield paint to the international press next week. “It could certainly be of military value,” Essen says, referring to both land-based and airborne forces. In addition, the Bundeswehr Technical Center for Ships and Naval Weapons (WTD 71) in Eckenförde on the Baltic Sea plans to test whether the paint can be used on the high seas.

Radar camouflaging is no longer as important to the military as it once was. “It was a huge issue during the cold war,” says Essen. “But, nowadays, it’s more of something that’s nice to have.” Moreover, when deployed abroad, the Bundeswehr is often more interested in achieving precisely the opposite effect, that is, being highly visible. In all likelihood, Nickel’s invention is probably more valuable for civilian use. Pilots and air traffic controllers worldwide complain about the interfering effect that airport buildings have on the radar screen. If they were coated with Nickel’s paint, they could be made largely invisible. “I’ve been trying to tell him for a long time,” Essen says, “that he’s more likely to get rich in civilian aviation than with the military.” In one respect, however, Essen’s message is disappointing. Drivers can’t expect to become invisible to police radar traps anytime soon. “When an object is moving at such close range,” he admits, “even the best shield paint doesn’t do any good.”