![]() White-phosphor NVGs have better low-light performance and are more reliable, as well as exhibiting reduced halos, increased contrast and clearer images, said ASU. Jim Winkel is President of ASU, Inc., which announced its white phosphor NVGs at the Airborne Law Enforcement Agency Annual Convention in 2014. The biggest change in recent years has been the adoption of white phosphor goggles for civilian operators Perhaps the biggest change in recent years has been the adoption of white phosphor goggles for civilian operators, allowing crews to see in something close to black-and-white (traditional NVGs used green-and-white as it was thought to be better for the eyes, Hackler explained). One factor, he said, is the use of cleaner manufacturing environments, which result in reduced contamination in the tubes. Darrell Hackler, Senior Director of Global Business Development at NVG tube-maker Harris Corporation, said that they’re getting more out of today’s GEN III image intensifiers than expected, with resolution and intensification improving over the past five years. The NVG tubes produced today are still deemed GEN III units, although advances have been made in some designs with ‘autogated’ automatic brightness control and light sensitivity. Early units were of considerable size and consumed a lot of power, as they had to be cooled far below freezing point, only later becoming smaller and able to operate at higher temperatures – current second-generation sensors are uncooled and of low power consumption. These first-generation systems were used in the Vietnam War to pick up enemy movements at night. Raytheon describes how in 1963, Texas Instruments’ Defense Systems and Electronics Division experimented with replacing the infrared film in aerial reconnaissance cameras with photoconductive detectors that could drive TV-style displays. NVGs had reached a point where they could be widely adopted by civilian aircrews.Īlthough the predecessors of today’s NVGs used infrared light, modern forward-looking infrared (FLIR) devices have a different ancestry. ‘Cut-away’ masks came in the 1980s, affording the ability to look under the tubes to read instruments, but the design of NVGs for aviation can be said to have fully matured in the 1990s, when ‘GEN III’ NVGs emerged with the best-ever performance (light amplification of around 30,000 to 50,000 times) and lightest weight, allowing for prolonged use. NVGs with a ‘full face’ mask began to be adopted by military pilots, but limitations such as weight (around 2 lb/1 kg) and the need to read cockpit instruments through the tubes meant they were uncomfortable and tiring to use. The ‘GEN II’ tubes of the 1970s introduced micro-channel plates and twisted fibre-optics, resulting in units that were both more powerful (light amplification of around 20,000 times) and more compact, with features including automatic brightness control. The creation of passive ‘GEN I’ tubes in the 1960s was a major step forward The creation of passive ‘GEN I’ tubes in the 1960s was a major step forward, as the upgraded image intensification technology amplified ambient light by around 1,000 times, allowing for use without an infrared illumination, although they still needed moonlight and clear skies. In the following decades, although they still needed the accompanying lights, the scopes improved, and the batteries became small enough be worn on a belt. Due to a limited sensitivity, the monocular scopes of that era (considered night vision ‘Generation 0’ or ‘GEN 0’) were used in tandem with infrared lights to illuminate the scene and were power-hungry – little hindrance for mounting on a tank perhaps, but it meant a bulky outfit for the rifleman, who would need to carry a large battery pack on his back. The technology was sufficiently developed by the Second World War to give a tactical advantage on the battlefield. It was a time when scientists and engineers were working intently to harness electromagnetic waves to create radio and electro-optical devices. The origins of NVGs can be traced back to early inventions such as the ‘black-light telescope’ created by Dr Vladimir Zworykin of the Radio Corporation of America, which used a silver-coated plate to convert invisible infrared rays into electrons that were projected onto a fluorescent viewing screen, as explained in Popular Science magazine back in 1936. Before we look at what the next-generation of systems might bring, it’s instructive to look back at how to how far we’ve come. Today’s fixed-wing and helicopter pilots can stay in the air when the sun goes down, often using night vision goggles (NVGs) and forward-looking infrared (FLIR) to help them to see in the dark, and the technology available right now is better than ever.
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