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StrategyPage reports,
The army has finally found a portable (three pounds) thermal sight that it can mount on assault rifles.
Specs and photos at the link. Strangely, I thought we had night sights for the M-16 years ago. And, indeed, a non-portable sight would seem rather unhelpful.
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Fersboo’s right.
“Thermal” and “night ” sights are completely different technologies.
One follows heat, the other amplifies what little light there is around. Night sights actually use a plug of germanium ( an opaque metal ) to amplify the light.
Just as an idiot little anecdote : I remember being shown round the Soviet night sight factory a decade or so ago, ( well, ex Soviet ) just before we bought their stock of germanium. They didn’t need it any more as the Russian Army wasn’t buying.
Exactly, a night scope is essentialy a photon multiplier. It increases the amount of visible reflected light present that is at an energy level too low to activate the rods in your eye.
A thermal sight shows light in a non visible spectrum, namely the infrared, to be seen. That allows one to see generated light from the heat in an object, such as a person or a vehicle idling or just recently stopped. This is a lot harder to do than just photo multiply. Most detectors tend to be quite large. This will be a definite inprovement over a night site. Enemy combatants would show up like a flare against the background foliage. Depending on the accuracy, we could see them through foliage.
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