The U.S. Army is looking to develop a new “fog of war,” but in order to keep up with ever-evolving technological advances, it is turning to a technology that dates back to the Civil War — smokescreens.
The need for obfuscating troops, particularly during more exposed points of contact on the battlefield — namely water crossings and obstacle breaching maneuvers — has become a point of vulnerability for the Army, argues Lt. Col. Michael Carvelli in this year’s spring issue of Military Review.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has only highlighted the growing need for the Army to invest in some old-school analog tactics, Carvelli writes.
“This obscuration gap resulted in debilitating casualties on both sides, delaying progress or causing mission failure,” he writes. “It is prudent for the U.S. Army to learn from its tactics in this ongoing conflict and apply these lessons through doctrinal, organizational and materiel investments.”
While the combustion of coal or oil got the job done in 1863 for Robert E. Lee, the Army is currently working on the next-gen smokescreen that can mask movement and drone surveillance.
The M75 screening obscuration module (SOM), used for the first time in 2025, is set to replace the legacy M56 Coyote after nearly seven years in development. Requiring nothing more than a solid, stable surface, the SOM can cut enemy visibility further than 650 feet (200 meters) for more than 12 minutes, according to the manufacturer.
Lighter than the Coyote, the M75 — roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase — can be operated by a single soldier and can be mounted atop a Humvee or in open terrain.
However, Carvelli calls the Army’s obscuration capabilities at a “nadir,” particularly at the platoon level, stating that the SOM is not widely available to troops and that the M56 Coyote was previously “capable of screening visually for 90 minutes or against infrared for 30 minutes across a much larger area.”
Danielle Kuhn, head of U.S. Army Development Command’s U.S. Army DEVCOM Chemical Biological Center Smoke & Target Defeat Branch, told Sandboxx News that despite Carvelli sounding the alarm, the service has recently passed some “key milestones” in the development of the M75.
“Unlike older systems, the SOM can rapidly deploy a tailored cloud of obscurant specifically designed to disrupt different types of sensors within that electromagnetic spectrum, depending upon where the threat lies,” Kuhn told Sandboxx News.
“And recently tests have actually demonstrated some ability to disseminate this enhanced material that we’ve been able to develop very successfully … so it only brings us closer to being able to equip our soldiers with that critical advantage on the modern battlefield," she added.
Advancements in chemistry means that the SOM will be able to obscure larger portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and disrupt enemy sensors, with Kuhn telling Sandboxx that such advancements have caused a “dramatic increase in performance.”
Carvelli points to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the urgent need for a widely available obscuration tool, noting “war bogs down temporally and becomes an attritional conflict. Obscuration is needed across the spectrum of conflict — using it at rapid speed when acting with haste as well as when conflicts slow for deliberate operations."
At this time, however, there is no current fielding timeline for the M75 SOM.
Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.