The night time hunt using IR was widely practiced by US and USSR in Afghanistan and Iraq as surroundings gets cooled down and cars, people and say donkeys used to transport weapons in mountains become highly contrast against the surroundings and thus easy to find visually and to lock IR seeker of a weapon. Saddam used USSR anti-ship missiles, old even then, to attack Iran oil storage tanks at night as the missiles were easily able to lock on that large bright IR radiation of the tanks still hot from the day against the cold night desert.
If you're really interested in this kind of thing, Grand Thumb on YouTube has a couple of videos about it. I think it was Dirty Civilian on YouTube that had a good video on how to prepare hide sites and the impact of using the right laundry detergent as to reduce or eliminate IR brightener chemicals, etc.
The night time hunt using IR was widely practiced by US and USSR in Afghanistan and Iraq as surroundings gets cooled down and cars, people and say donkeys used to transport weapons in mountains become highly contrast against the surroundings and thus easy to find visually and to lock IR seeker of a weapon. Saddam used USSR anti-ship missiles, old even then, to attack Iran oil storage tanks at night as the missiles were easily able to lock on that large bright IR radiation of the tanks still hot from the day against the cold night desert.