Obscured view: night vision technology not meeting troops' needs.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Soldier Technology

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Retired Marine Sgt. Maj. Dominick Green shouted at the group of assembled night vision technologists in a voice that would make a drill sergeant wince.

He wanted to make a point. And he wanted to make sure everyone heard it: Marines carry four pounds of optical equipment on their rifles and that makes their job difficult.

"There is entirely way too much gear on that rifle right now!" he said as veins pulsed underneath his bald pate.

There are night vision scopes, laser designators, optics and thermal imagers, said Green, who is now a capabilities analyst at the Marine Corps Combat Development Center.

He needs it all in one small package, and he needs it right away.

He wants night vision scopes that see as far out as the maximum effective range of the weapon, he said at an Institute for Defense and Government Advancement conference.

The Marine "doesn't know if it's a human being or a refrigerator. That does me no good!"

Green will have to wait a long time before all those optics are combined into one scope. A very long time, Joseph Estrera, senior vice president and chief technology officer at L3 Electro Optical Systems, said in an interview.

"It's like the time machine and finding Noah's Ark, and the Loch Ness monster. It's a dream," he said.

The night vision industry is attempting to improve on the relatively simple PVS-14 night vision goggles by combining them with digital images fused with thermal sensors. Overlaying the two images onto a digital viewer will make images pop out, proponents say. Then soldiers and Marines will be able to distinguish better between a refrigerator and a human target.

Converting to digital may also one day allow them to send what they are seeing over a wireless network--to other soldiers in their squad or back to a command post.

ITT Night Vision Corp. this year fielded a non-digital fused device--the enhanced night vision goggle. But the technology push into the digital world is hitting a brick wall, Estrera said.

It is coming down to the view screen, he said. Current night vision goggles are "direct view," meaning the user sees the images through the tubes much like an ordinary pair of binoculars.

Digital will require that the users see the fused data on a tiny "indirect view" screen. A computer chip will process the traditional green night vision glow and fuse it with the red thermal images so the user can see both spectrums.

These small screens are about size of a postage stamp.

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