I left many of the technical descriptions on the link, below.

Lynda

******************************************
By David Hambling
Aerospace & Defense

I'm a South London-based technology journalist, consultant and author
-------

Snip
The U.S. Navy has patented technology to create mid-air images to fool infrared and other sensors. This builds on many years of laser-plasma research and offers a game-changing method of protecting aircraft from heat-seeking missiles. It may also provide a clue about the source of some recent UFO sightings by military aircraft.

The U.S. developed the first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile back in the 1950’s, and the latest AIM-9X version is still in frontline service around the world. This type of sensor works so well because hot jet engines exhausts shine out like beacons in the infrared, making them easy targets. Pilots under attack can eject decoy flares to lure a missile away from the launch aircraft, but these only provide a few seconds protection. More recently laser infrared countermeasures have been fielded which dazzle the infrared seeker.

Snip
“If you have a very short pulse you can generate a filament, and in the air that can propagate for hundreds of meters, and maybe with the next generation of lasers you could produce a filament of even a mile,” Dr. Henning told the magazine, indicating that it should be possible to create phantoms at considerable distances.

Phantom aircraft that can move around at high speed and appear on thermal imagers may ring some bells. After months of debate, in April the Navy officially released infra-red videos of UFOs encountered by their pilots, although the Pentagon prefers to call them “unidentified aerial phenomena.” The objects in the videos appear to make sudden movements impossible for physical aircraft, rotate mid-air and zip along at phenomenal speed: all maneuvers which would be easy to reproduce with a phantom projected image.

It is unlikely the Pentagon would release videos of their own secret weapon in a bizarre double bluff. But other nations may have their own version. In the early 1990s the Russians claimed that they could produce glowing ‘plasmoids’ at high altitude using high-power microwave or laser beams; these were intended to disrupt the flight of ballistic missiles, an answer to the planned American ‘Star Wars’. Nothing came of the project, but the technology may have been refined for other applications in the subsequent decades.