Wonderful concept for radar invisibility, expecially since it might be feasible at current tech levels. I wonder what the eventual cost per square yard will turn out to be when the Pentagon starts buying it, for whatever aircraft is under development at the time. State troopers across the country will cringe, if it becomes commercially available.

The article explains the wavelength-dependency of the idea: that tweaking visible light has to wait until nanotech can make components small enough. Seems to me, it wouldn't be very effective except at long range. Depending on the size of the object, at a certain distance abberation at the edges will make it plain to observers that there's something there.

At a sufficient distance -- say, from orbit, or from an SR-70 -- the stuff would make terrific camo... but only at visible wavelengths. Since it has to be built of components tuned to a particular bandwidth, it wouldn't be any more slippery in IR than canvas is; in radar, than aluminum foil is. Multiple-bandwidth hybrids would be less effective per area of coverage in all wavelengths, by simple mechanics.

Star Trek "cloaks" were energy fields, of course, not bolts of high-tech cloth, and they worked in all wavelengths. Even so, the writers finally caught up: I vaguely recall an episode of NextGen in which they were able to target a cloaked ship by the distortion of star images as it occulted them.