Thursday, November 12, 2015

Night-Vision System for Army Soldiers Demands Unusual Collaboration Between Industry Archrivals

The Army is poised to invest more than a billion dollars over the next decade in a James Bond-like targeting technology for infantry troops. A riflescope wirelessly transmits video to a night-vision goggle, allowing a shooter to kill a target without having to bring the weapon up to eye level.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

1992. They called it "land warrior" and have ALREADY sunk SEVERAL BILLION dollars into what has become one of the biggest military boondoggles in history.(F-35 anyone?) Problem is that like the 25MM "space gun" it is far more "eye of Mordor" propaganda than it is a real "system". But like they say in congress; "A trillion hear and a trillion there and soon you are talking about real money"--Ray

Chiu ChunLing said...

The only thing unusual about this kind of collaboration between industry rivals is the Army recognizing that interoperability matters before soldiers are dying from the lack of it.

In any other industry, the customer demand for interoperability would be weighed against the advantages of proprietary technology performance and the market would decide (generally heavily in favor of more compatibility). Rival tech companies get together to draft compatibility standards all the time, revealing some of the advantages of their proprietary tech in exchange for more influence setting standards which allow those advantages to be exploited fully. The fact that this allows competitors a baseline to reverse-engineer aspects of their technology is an accepted price for an early lead in gaining a good reputation with satisfied customers.

luagha said...


This was extensively described in roleplaying games in the late 1980's early '90s.

Anonymous said...

Very easy to do. However there are multiple problems. Any wireless tech can be jammed.
Batteries... You need lots and lots of batteries. Field of vision. You only see what is on the camera. It is not hard for an enemy to hack your video feed and remove objects he dosent want you to see Or add a few hundred imaginary enemy troops or tanks or whatever he may want to. I can go on and on and on about all the possible fails.

l2a3 said...

So you mean like a IR laser and NODS?

Anonymous said...

Hey Ray,
The phrase is: "A trillion here (not hear) and a trillion there". "Here" is the opposite of "there". "Hear" refers to an ear receiving a sound.