- [Narrator] Welcome back to "Defense News Weekly."
The ability to own the night
has long been a specialty of the US military.
But new advances have made seeing in low light
or obscured conditions better in recent years,
potentially creating an even greater advantage.
We visited Elbit America
to see new solutions they're working on
to improve night vision.
Check it out.
(bouncy music)
- So we're here at Elbit America
to look at some night vision devices.
Henry, tell us a little bit about
what we see in front of us.
- All right, so what you got in front of you
is enhanced night vision Goggle binocular AN/PSQ-44.
Comprised of four main components.
You got your night vision viewer,
positioning assembly binocular,
universal helmet mount assembly,
and the battery pack.
Clip it all together,
powered by four L91 lithium AA batteries.
And now you have one
of the most advanced night vision products
available in the market today.
It contains two high performance image intensifiers.
One 640 by 480 thermal imager.
And they're optically fused
so that the viewer is able to see both thermal
and image-intensified imagery simultaneously.
This is a squad binocular night vision goggle
fielded by the US Marine Corps.
Both systems share some common traits.
Both are image-intensified binoculars,
both have side stow capability,
both share the same tube type and both have thermal imagers.
The enhanced night vision goggle binocular
in addition to an all weather, day or night thermal imager
and your tubes,
it also has intra-soldier wireless capability.
So you can link in, let's say drone feeds, okay,
vehicle camera feeds,
thermal image from your weapon site feeds
all in the user's eye.
The squad binocular night vision goggle, SBNVG for short,
has an external clip on thermal imager, ECOTI.
Its image is projected into the image-intensified tube.
Native fusing means I have a camera,
and inside I have your classic
image-intensifier night vision tube.
The thermal image is projected on a display inside,
and then it is actually combined in a beam combiner prism.
There's two images
that the user sees it in their eye simultaneously,
or they can see them independently.
- So the night vision
in the ENVG Bravo has different settings.
We'll see a little sample of that,
but to describe about what we're seeing
if we switch between the settings on the device.
- Sure.
So if you're looking at a scene,
you have three options.
You have white hot, so hotter objects appear brighter.
You have black hot,
where hotter objects actually appear darker.
And then you have outline.
Now outline's cool.
Outline actually shows you like
if you're looking at a person, you'll see their outline,
but you won't see them as a big white blob.
Most users when walking a route, they use outline.
Outline is the most useful
because nature doesn't do straight lines.
And if you ever noticed this,
nature never ever does straight lines.
In a thermal, straight lines and outline,
they pop out immediately.
- One of the things that's really
a great feature about this, like you said,
is that is that capability of having it
all be able to transfer back and forth
to the goggle from one device.
It also has its own power supply.
Can you talk a little bit about
kind of how this thing is powered,
how long it can last
and kind of how all this fits together?
- Sure, I can do that.
So power is provided in the battery pack
by four lithium batteries.
You can buy these on the shelf.
Depending on your operating mode,
operating life is anywhere between 4 hours and 10 hours.
It depends on how many of the features you use.
It's kind of like your car.
The faster you drive it, the faster you burn gas, right?
Same's true for the goggle.
- So I understand that has a lot of great capabilities
with just a few batteries,
but what can this device do
with the battery power it has?
- Okay, the one battery it has on the bridge
can run the two tubes in the binocular for 20 hours.
The CR123 cell, it has an ECOTI.
It can run the ECOTI for three hours.
It also has an external battery pack available
that can extend the run life of the ECOTI and the binocular.
- So we have some advanced features on the ENVG
compared to this device,
but both of these devices are new and being used.
What about say the PVS-14
or the older devices that people are currently carrying,
what kind of features does this have that does not?
- Okay, so PVS-14 is a monocular night vision device.
It's probably the most ubiquitous
night vision device in the world.
This gives you two big advantages right off the bat.
Two tubes means you get binocular vision.
You get depth perception in low light.
You also gain your thermal imager.
Thermal imager breaks camouflage, okay?
It means if a guy's wearing digis,
and he's hiding in a tree
and you can't see him with night vision,
thermal imager, he'll pop out.
He'll be the only thing you see.
All right, the ENVG also gives you wireless connectivity.
That's critical.
The things you see where people shoot around corners.
Yeah, that's real.
The ENVG enables that capability, okay?
The ENVG enables drone feeds.
It enables what we call augmented reality, okay?
AR is navigation.
So when you're doing land nav, you're walking around,
you're not stopping looking down at your map,
having to shine a light.
No, no, no, it's in your eye.
You see it the whole time.
Full situational awareness of the battlefield.
You can do blue force tracking
so you know where all your squad mates are in real time.
- So you can see more than just what's in front of you.
You can see feeds coming from other places.
You can also see more detail and depth
on the terrain you're featuring,
and as you said,
you can break up camouflage and see people
that otherwise could hide from you.
- Absolutely.
- And what about the durability?
Obviously, you know, marines are gonna get,
they're gonna get wet.
It's gonna be, you know, maritime environment.
You know soldiers are gonna get wet and cold too,
and the heat.
Can this operate in like extreme temperatures
of heat or cold?
- Absolutely.
Both systems can operate between -40 Fahrenheit
all the way up to, basically 49 degrees C,
it's hot.
That's midday Fallujah hot, okay?
Doesn't bother them.
They work fine no matter the temperature.
Immersion, enhanced night vision goggle binocular
is rated for one meter of powered immersion
and we test it on every goggle we sell.
The SBNVG, the goggle itself is rated for 20 meters.
Like, Frogman depths, okay?
The ECOTI itself is not rated for nearly as deep,
but thermal doesn't work underwater anyway.
So you're not using it there.
You know, it'll be in your dive back.
- Now, I know the Army is specifically,
the Marine Corps as well,
very interested in what they like to call modular,
being able to upgrade systems
without replacing the whole thing.
Now obviously you guys are talking
about design changes that can work over time
and you can work with those with the customer.
As far as software,
anything you can kind of plug in, plug out,
basically, talk about that.
- Yeah, so first of all, battery pack clips on, right?
I wanna upgrade this,
I don't have to send this whole kit back.
This battery pack can be completely
disassembled by fort maintenance.
We have demonstrated that.
The brain in it is upgradeable.
We have to work out a program
with the army to be able to do that.
But it absolutely, if they say we want
to enhance the capability for, a good example,
they wanted to add a weapon site reticle.
The type that they hadn't had before.
They called us up and said, "Hey, can you do this?"
We said, "Yeah, give us three weeks. No problem."
Added it, range tested, it it works great.
Army says, "I want that. Put it in there."
A month later, boom, rolled out.
Just like that.
All right, now you talk about enhancements in the goggle.
Now this I'm particularly proud of.
Each of these monoculars
where you have your night vision tubes,
they're held on by four screws.
That's it.
I take those four screws out.
I can take that off there.
It's great for serviceability, great for maintainability,
but it's also great for upgradeability to your point.
Let's say I have
a new completely new night vision device type.
And I say, "This thing is awesome.
Better than any tube ever built."
I wanna change it out.
All we gotta do, we build these up in the factory.
As you can see, it's nice and clean.
We can align it, bolt it on,
it's plug and play, rock and roll.
Same for this monocular with the thermal camera.
Let's say there's some
great new thermal imager technology comes out, right?
We design a monocular that bolts up to this interface.
Four bolts, pop this one off, pop your new one on,
bolt it on, plug and play, rock and roll.
It's that easy. Five minutes, you're done.