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"...radiates in IR due to it's design characteristics..."

Any heat engine vehicle would tend to radiate in IR. Military observation craft could be made to be very small, and operate at very low energy signatures. They should also be relatively inexpensive, but require ground support.

I can even envision a very large vehicle designed to be invisible to radar and optical bandwidths, but I can't see much practical use for it, given what we have already.

Anybody wanna lay odds that there isn't a U2 variant that Francis Gary Powers wouldn't even recognize as related to his craft? It has been a lot of years, and if the Blackbird came out of the Skunk Works so long ago, what do you think they might have up their sleeves today?

Heck, it's a given they have stuff we don't know about.
(There was a design a coupple years ago for a massive ultra-high altitude wedge shaped zepplin. The idea was to have it fly at night and be basically a ghost in the sky invisible to the eye.)
No, don't know what purpose such would serve.
But, they developed the YF-12 interceptor somewhat out in the open and teh Air Force didn't want it.
So it became a spyplane.
*chuckle*
And from it sprang the much larger SR-71.
Loved both planes, they looked wicked.
(The missiles the YF-12 was suppsoed to carry eventually gave birth to the Phoenix missile according to some theorists I've read.)