Night Vision Questions For You Mil Guys...

[geekWithA.45]

In report after report on the Iraq war, I've heard that the BG's fundamentally didn't understand that we could see them at night.

I can imagine some comedic potential in that.


Anyway, I digress. For grins and giggles, I decided to cheat and get myself an early Christmas present, a gen I+ monocular with a head mount, to see the dealio for myself.

To cut to the chase:

HOW THE HECK DO YOU GUYS AIM?

I've gotten a workable solution with my tritium sighted handgun*, but aiming the AR seems hopeless. Is there a way to do it without an infrared laser? What does the manual say on this one?


*In other words, focusing the NV lense on the front sight is useless, so I've set the focus at room lengths, and learned how to interpret the blurs of the night sights

 

[dave3006]

I am not military. I have PVS-7Bs. I have trained at night with my Benelli shotgun and have had good results point shooting at up to 35 yards with 00 buck. You can't mount the weapon properly. However, a long arm is easy to point and the spread of buckshot at about 1" per yard gives you some room for error.

I would not purchase the gen I stuff. This is an area where you get what you pay for. The gen III stuff is awesome.

 

[geekWithA.45]

I agree the gen III stuff is awesome, but it also costs as much as a car, which is a bit much for a "fun" item.

 

[Jeff White]

geekwitha.45,

Buy a visible laser. IR lasers are regulated by the FDA and are hard for someone not involved with the military or law enforcement to get. Not illegal to possess, just hard to get. Visible lasers work fine. They are much more reasonably priced then IR lasers too.

You'll need one for your handgun also. You'll fing that the tritium sights on your pistol will look like large flares are burning on the slide, making them uselss as sights through your NOD.

I'd also recommend that if you can only afford Gen I equipment, save your pennies for better stuff. The Gen I stuff is crude technology. It's only very good in total darkness. You'll find that if you are in an area with a lot of ambiant light (streetlights etc.) it will be nearly useless from blooming out and you'll be unable to look into shadows even close up.

HTH
Jeff

 

[fix]

Aimpoint Comp M

 

[Derek Zeanah]

Ditto on the Aimpoint -- the one whose lowest 2 settings are for NOD use.

Ditto on Gen1=useless. It's useful if you've got a flashlight with an IR filter, but since I've ID's cigarette s from 200 yards with a Gen3 7B, ...

Gen 2 is almost as good as Gen3; you might want to go that route.

 

[Langenator]

Gwa45-

Us infantry types generally use IR lasers attached and boresighted to the weapons. The specific systems are the PAQ-4B or the PEQ-2A. If properly sighted in, these can be extremely accurate-I've seen troops shooting silouette targets at 300m, at night, shooting from the hip. You just put the laser dot (sometimes it will blink as well) on the target and fire.

An alternative is to attach the PVS-14 monocular to the M-68 red-dot sight. Of course, to do this you have to have a -14 and an M-68. And if you do this, you have to point the weapon everywhere to look around.

They've just started fielding Thermal Weapon Sights suitable for tripod mounted weapons (M240B, M2 MGs). I haven't had a chance to see them in action yet.

 

[Chris Rhines]

Visible laser sights can be picked up quite nicely by NVGs. They'll work in a pinch.

As Jeff White says, IR laser designators are not illegal to own, but no one will sell them to us civillians. The IR laser diodes, on the other hand, are easy to come by. You can buy them from any large electronics supply house.

This may be a bit off topic, but if there were a civillian-friendly source for IR laser designators, would anyone be interested in one?

- Chris

 

[olyAR73]

PEQ-2A. Yep. A cheaper route is a good mounted TAC light w/ an IR filter. It will light up everything like a darn spot light, but the light is only visible to those with NVGs. Its our prefered method of room clearing currently.

Also on the enemy's equipment: dont be lulled into thinking they dont have some high speed equipment. Some of they're gear is NIB and puts ours to shame. Case in point: I have a friend in the 101st who "captured" some NVG capable sniper scopes that out perform anything we have. Their problem is that they dont have the proper training, if any, and the really good stuff never made it down to the line guys, but was horded by Saddams little minions. Which was fortunate for us.

Try the TAC light, gw/A.45.

 

[Sven]

Case in point: I have a friend in the 101st who "captured" some NVG capable sniper scopes that out perform anything we have.

If I may ask, where were these scopes manufactured?

 

[geekWithA.45]

BTW, gang, thanks for all the advice.

Considering it's just a toy for me, I'm gonna pass on the gen III stuff, much as I'm tempted to scrimp it together.

In the spirit of fun, I think I'll look into mounting up an IR filtered light & laser for my next nocturnal plinking.

Cheers!

 

[olyAR73]

Good question...I had to email him back to get some more details. He said they found 4 Swarovoski scopes that had what seems to be Japanese nvg monoculars attached, (not factory installed).

 

[Sven]

Interesting.