Message posted by lone wolf on August 08, 2004 at 11:19:24 PST:
I came across a pilot who has flown in the various flags (Red, Green and Maple). We talked a bit about night vision capabilities and he cleared up some questions for me. The first had to do with the Pave Hawk. During last October's flag, I watched a Pave Hawk fly blacked out through gen 2 Soviet night vision (NV). One thing that stood out was the hub of the tail rotor. It just glowed under NV. It turns out that the glow was strictly due to heat caused by friction. The MH-53 Pave Low has IR lights in it tail rotor that can be turned on during training. [As you probably know, the tail rotor is really dangerous in all sorts of ways, so being able to see it during train would come in handy.] The second has to do with the C-130s that fly blacked out and on the deck at the Keno airstript. They have IR strobes and an optical solid IR light on the top of the plane that can be used during training. He also mentioned that they have IR flares that can be used instead of the visible flares. I haven't seen these used at Red Flag, but it would be something to look for if you have NV. The flares are probably bright enough that gen 1 NV would pick them up. The same with the flashing IR strobes. I'm not sure gen 1 NV would pick up the heat on the tail rotor. Finally, I asked about IR detection of people using targetting systems (not NV googles, but the good stuff). He said in Afghanistan, there was no problem spotting heat escaping from caves. This would be just body heat, not a fire in the cave. If you saw the AC130 video that made the rounds on the net we know how well a body shows up on the targetting system, or even er um pieces of a body.
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