I still feel the "you need both" answer is the correct one. Most people overestimate their shooting/weapons handling skills.

Using a laser tends to be "quicker" for many folks (just my observation).

Which one is the correct one? The answer is probably "yes."

Doing some dry work draw and move drills one time, a very analytical student asked me "Robert, do we draw first or move first?"

My answer was "yes."

He blue screened for a minute, but he ended up getting it.

If it were me, I would ALWAYS assume you are fighting peer to peer, even if you know Bubba the meth head or some banger from the block. Never underestimate the BGs.

With that regard, I would make sure everyone doesn't "glow" under NV as part of your pre-checks. I'd make sure all the cool daddy IR reflective patches, etc. are removed, etc. Kinda like making sure people have magazines in their pouches instead of ham sandwiches... True story, couldn't make it up...

AD/ND issues regarding IR lasers/lights, etc. should be fixed in training. In an ad hoc situation with varying levels of training, etc. keeping it simple may be the best option- IR only lasers that don't even have a green visible, etc.   At the start of the night phase of class, despite the admonitions to check your gear, make sure your on the right setting, etc. at the first drill of the night, it's almost always a Pink Floyd laser lightshow....  What do I mean by that? In a group of 12 students there will be 1-2 visible lasers, sometimes even a white light going on during that first drill.

People fidget around and eff around with gear, thinking they are more familiar with it than they are. Again, in a MIXED group (some experienced, some not so much) you should EXPECT this. As far as SOPs on how to avoid that? Perhaps after a pre-check you could do a quick piece of tape over the switch position on the IR laser (depending on unit). Sounds parochial but might save a lesser experienced person from turning to visible accidentally.

As far as a lesser experienced person touching the switch ahead of time... this is a training issue just like leaving your booger hook on the bang switch when it's not supposed to be there.

You could plan to go active only when your near an objective, or when things go hot.

Kinda like using hand and arm signals when creeping in, but using your big boy voice for commands once things go loud.

In that regard, if everyone had both passive and IR capabilities, you could wait till the ambush is set, or the raid is ready, before even turning on IR lasers if you think that could be a problem. A piece of tape might mark the limit of movement on a laser switch for ones with both laser and vis (depends on models, etc.) or easier would be to check switch setting to IR only before patrol leaves and make sure everyone puts the cover on the IR laser output- remove at ORP.

Beacons- are heavily over used IMO. You could switch them on immediately before (if you had time) but assuming peer to peer this would become immediately evident.

For civilians in Minecraft and airsoft and what not... we are talking about controlling SMALL groups of people. Highly unlikely you will have to de-conflict with the next company on your flank.... Simple things like always staying with your buddy, always knowing where your buddy is, etc. will be more important for small groups. Accountability is everyone's burden, not just the TL or ATL.

Some random thoughts on lunch break :)

I think it is equally important to train both ways, because you are absolutely correct - active IR illum and lasers can be seen by everyone with nods and it can become a major liability. Most of my builds have some form of passive NV aiming option, and I probably need to up the training time for passive, but NV is still fairly uncommon here in Michigan, unlike a lot of you guys down south.

Yep.

The older Vietnam vet SF guys that trained us waaay back taught us to shoot at night without anything. Back then we had no nods, electronic sights, etc. We learned to shoot brown silhouette targets in the brush that had one of those tiny 1 inch "fishing" cyalume lightsticks on them. One of the guys asked "what the lightstick was for?" One of the old vets said "at night in the jungle, that's sometimes all you can see of the enemy."  It was there to mimic muzzle flash.

Suppressors help to a point, but your never invisible.

The old clamp your arm/elbow over the stock bit!

We were shown where you could time single shots to the steps also and that somehow helped accuracy a bit. But yes it was all in the context of assaulting through an ambush, rushing through a position, etc. Fast'ish type movement.

"Point" firing a rifle at closer ranges like that allows you to move a little quicker, which is the whole context of the idea. Close range/under stress.

We just finished up a 3 day pistol class a couple weekends back down here. 2 days and a night on the square range, 1 day in the 2 story house working FOT and FOF against live role players. On the square range after the basics were covered, we did a lot of compression/extension drills (managing space) as well as one handed shooting right and left hand, etc.  Day 3 was all the FOT and FOF. The role players did great, several deserved an Emmy... a lot of the scenarios in the 2 story house involved managing a contact, managing space and time. And we threw in all kinds of light stressors. In the AAR I asked- "when you were engaging the role players, how many of you looked at your sights under that stress?"  Not a hand was raised.

Lots of truff here!

Don't count yourself out my friend! Lots of "elderly dogs"  have a helluva bite  

Caleb was in his 80's when he went off on his own to climb mountains and kill giants, and this is AFTER helping Joshua (another "elderly" by that time) slay hundreds of thousands and gain the land. Probably close to 40 years of campaigning and then went and climbed mountains to fight giants! Hell yes, I want that kind of vitality.

A lot of people told me they bought Luna ELIR3s for that reason.

I think a lot of folks are operating on a somewhat outdated understanding of TTPs, and no, I'm not talking about "learning from Vietnam vets," but rather, "2004 Fallujah" was twenty years ago.

No serious organization, whether domestic LE / SWAT or military unit preparing for potential LSCO is advocating for the use of IR lasers and illuminators in the way being described here, and the current "frontline" infantry equipment that is being fielded / filtering down through the Army's CCF is an AN/PSQ-42 or -44 ENVG-B linked to an AN/PAS-35 FWS-I providing both passive and even defilade-fire capabilities, the AN/PEQ-15s are considered a "legacy" system, though they are still fielded because, as they say, "they have their uses." Going a step further, I've heard and relayed here (or, at least in some iteration of the night vision forums) the VAS and Lethality PMs and PEOs complain that despite all of the cool gear they're fielding to the infantry soldier, they still insist upon and refuse to give up their ATPIALs.

Moreover, much of what most folks were doing in GWOT didn't necessarily "fit" normal doctrine for conventional operations, even discounting enemy night vision capabilities, what's the point of a "presence patrol" or "stability operations" where you're sneaking around being all "passive" and no one knows you're there? When and where it was called for (like reconnaissance, LP/OPs, etc.) IR light discipline has long been a thing.

Beyond that, not only is passive aiming a component of TNVC's POI, but I have personally been talking about and advocating for passive aiming and taking into account the fact that the enemy may have night vision capabilities since 2007, when an AN/PVS-14 went missing from a sister platoon in Afghanistan and was never recovered and have spoken about it all over ARFCOM for many years, often being told by many self-proclaimed experts that I was full of shit and that passive aiming was stupid, etc., it has only been in the last 4-5 years that others have jumped on that train, and now preaching "old news" as revolutionary ideas and hot takes, like... thermal being more effective against dug-in enemies in an established defensive position.

That being said where IR aiming lasers / MFALs "shine," pardon the pun, at least in an LSCO / P2P / near peer situation is offensive, maneuver operations, blind squirrels and nuts and all that, but once you "go loud" passive doesn't really mean all that much, especially considering it's usually going to be initiated by something belt fed if not explosive--hell, we used to (and sometimes still do) "light up the night" with illumination flares, and if you're "running and gunning," assaulting through the objective, not only is a laser going to be much faster than passive aiming while using NVGs, it can become an important non-verbal communication and team and direct-fire coordination tool. You can mark and identify and "hand-off" targets during bounding and/or for the SBF, coordinate lift and shift fires, designate LOAs, etc., all of which honestly kinda sucked to do until Big Mother Army blessed us with IR lasers (including during the daytime) and why some dudes still carry whistles and shit on their gear, it's no wonder Joe isn't ready to give it up no matter what fancy-ass AI-powered Bluetooth-enabled multi-spectral RTA system you give him (or her).

Beyond that, why do they show up so much in "training," from which derives a lot of social media, etc., and seem to get so much emphasis and discussion?

Sure, there's the aspirational factor that many guys base their equipment choices off of what Special Operations folks are using--in many cases in a direct-action, or as some have referred to it "hyper-conventional," offensive, maneuver role. It should come as no surprise that the guys whose primary job is to storm buildings and kill everyone inside have their rifles set up for that.

There's also the fact that much of the available night vision "training" out there is either adapted from LE-based POIs or "SOF Fantasy Camp" (see above). In terms of LE based training, remember that 1) RUF / ROE for domestic LE are much different than expeditionary military operations, and 2) much of it is based around what could be considered a similar "offensive" type scenario, whether it's hostage rescue, pursuit, criminal apprehension, or even active shooter. Meanwhile, for "non-SHTF," non-insurgency / irregular warfare based training, "mainstream" civilian training scenarios and situations tend to be based more around urban and suburban contexts because--that's where most people live and where you're most likely to encounter conflict with others.

So, let's take it that last fantastical step. No reason to discuss why it might happen, let's just say for whatever reason, we're in the situation where small, organized groups of American civilians are having to roll around conducting paramilitary operations CONUS. Well, going back to the top, I'd say for the most part, they'd be operating more or less like conventional infantry as best they can within their equipment and circumstances.

In a defensive posture or against a dug-in enemy in a prepared defense, passive sighting, and in particular, thermal, has long since been acknowledged as "king," even prior to the ENVG-B / IVAS / FWS-I the AN/PAS-13 family has been standard in infantry MTOEs for at least fifteen years and generally preferred for defensive / static positions, as well as for most casualty producing weapons (machine guns). So, as a civilian in a primarily defensive posture, a person might not have access to an M240L or M249, and maybe doesn't have or doesn't want to roll with thermal, yes, passive aiming with NV is probably going to be the next-best-thing.

Okay, but say they want to do something more offensive, not just taking and holding ground, but even harassment, supply line disruption, hit-and-run ambushes, etc., sure, when they're alone or maybe in a small, two-person team, passive-only might be better, but as soon as that element starts getting any larger than a fireteam, that coordination and communication piece becomes way more important than just the firing solution / control, which sure can be done without as we all did before lasers were super common, but the laser sure makes it a lot easier, and I daresay almost necessary for the speed and pace of modern combat, where help (for the enemy) is not a radio call and crashing through the woods away, but a single press of a button can have a loitering autonomous suicide drone honed in on your precise location while you're trying to figure out how to tell B-Team where that one asshole who found himself some decent cover is that could fuck them up, rather than just walking them on with a laser dot.

How you want to crack any of these particular nuts and what piece of equipment is adequate for the task is of course entirely up to you, some folks will want a "military grade" MFAL to go with their "military grade" rifle and "military grade" helmet and "military grade" optic and "military grade" night vision. Others may not feel they "need" that level of equipment. A TOR-MINI IR and Inforce WML Gen. 3 WH/IR will accomplish pretty much everything that's been talked about in this thread for under $300, it just won't happen to look like a much more expensive DoD issued laser while doing it.

~Augee

I agree.

Guys discussing their experiences going out with just 4 or 6 guys into the jungle for a week or so, maybe even crossing borders in the process, knowing they are totally on their own for the most part, but definitely if/when a border was crossed (deniability) carrying everything they need for that time, no resupply, trying to avoid contact is considerably different than riding out in a vehicle for a direct action hit and leaving as soon as it's over.





Few "civilians" will have
1. Enough people
2. Enough TRAINED people
3. Enough TRAINED and EQUIPPED people to pull off "standard infantry" tactics.

A presence patrol?  Maybe if you had the above in a post hurricane type scenario- aka the "don't loot, drunks with guns" type thing you have seen in the past. But that's hardly the same thing. Even if you wanted to be seen doing the "chest thumping" others are talking about, would it necessarily be good for you in the long term? Letting your neighbors know you have 8 guys around armed playing Batman in the boondocks?  Most (not all) of us live in areas with a lot of liberal POS around. You want Karen the HOA president to see this?   Just like others that tout freedom and liberty and turn in competitors or try to limit competition, Karen, another liberal will be looking to turn your arse in ASAP.

Some of this is psychological- re: do you make your presence known or not.




Having been doing this sort of thing since the mid 80's, I can say most definitely it's true most folks will be lucky to have 4 to 6 man teams. Even now, ahead of time, when all the prevents them is getting a "kitchen pass" from the wifey, or a weekend BBQ, try to get a group of guys together to train regularly. And don't forget they need to equip themselves. No one is playing for Uncle Sugar- I.e, no one gets free shit, you have to provide your own. Very rare breed of men that will go out, give up a weekend every month (or more) to hit the field, live dirty and train. Summer soldiers and sunshine patriots and what not, all of this has happened before.



My advice would be to not really give AF what the "mainstream" is teaching as it may not be totally applicable to what YOU need to do. Learn to tailor anything you learn to YOUR circumstances and your situation. Acting like an "infantry platoon" when it's you, Bubba Joe and 2 other guys, with mixed experience, is definitely not the way to go. We can use that type of thing as a general guide but learn to adapt it to just a handful of guys.

There is much to learn from the "old guys" as well as the new guys, ALL of it however has to be tailored to YOUR situation. All the re-historizing and brash statements aside, everyone should have a learning attitude and be willing to sift through material, use what is good for YOUR situation and jettison the rest. Lots of "mainstream" training is like that, is there much value in 5 yard rifle drills? Is there any value in some of these little BS "scanning" techniques that are little more than a sideways glance while on line with other shooters? Very little value, but it allows people to stack 16 people on line on a range at one time and also to say "we teach scanning"- no, you teach a BS half head turn that doesn't actually allow the student to really "see" anything. Great for IG or whatever TF, but little value in real life as you can't really see shit doing it that way.

I didn't feel like you were chest thumping. Moreover, it felt like a healthy what-if scenario type conversation - and the forums certainly benefit from the added conversation.

I was and am aware that you're talking about the theoretical "Boog," and again, there's no real reason to discuss how or why that might happen, but for discussion's sake, let's pretend it has come to that.

The point of reiterating why most of the "mainstream" training and discussion revolving around lasers is the way it is is exactly that. Contextualizing discussions and training that may not feel relevant to you.

I know I write a lot, so maybe you missed the whole part about irregular warfighting, harassment, hit and runs, etc., so let me go ahead and restate a couple of points, which may on the surface appear contradictory of one another but are two sides of the same coin:

- On the one hand, the point that I was making is that don't seem to clearly understand the putative "enemy's" modern doctrine and TTPs, because they're basing them off of twenty year old newsreel videos and social media and open enrollment training classes that, as I and others have already acknowledged are not necessarily relevant to the scenarios some may be imagining / preparing for. However, while an individual may not find them relevant for themselves--if (the royal) you're going to fight an organized force, being familiar with how they're equipped, what their capabilities are, and how they are likely to react in a given situation is pretty important to a guerilla. Even by the late-2000s we were already saying: "the dumb ones are already dead." Desperate suicide bomber recruits aside, you can sure bet while they might not have been able to cite the FM paragraph and line number, the guys that were left had a pretty good idea of how we did business.

- At the same time, whether you're talking about a lone-wolf, fireteam, or brigade, there's only so many ways a small arms fight can go, and the basic concepts and fundamentals of getting into a small arms fight and the concepts of offense and defense are still pretty stable. Equipment and specific TTPs and even doctrine may evolve and change, but the fundamentals, practiced by infantrymen at least since rifled barrels were invented more or less still hold true. So when I say at potential guerilla is going to want to essentially function like infantry, it's not that they should go taking lessons out of the 82nd Airborne's TY2024 TACSOP, it is that as best as they are able, they're going to be following and practicing the same fundamentals--as I said, a small arms fight is still a small arms fight. Any presumptive guerilla / insurgent is still going to want to maneuver, displace, mass effects, and in any element of greater size than "one," have some form of coordination.

There's nothing "special" about a guerilla tactics once you start actually trading rifle rounds. If one were to want to get into the nitty-gritty about irregular warfare and a "Boog" scenario, really what they should be talking about / learning about (and some already are) are HME, IEDs, booby traps, supply and infrastructure vulnerabilities, not to mention more "modern" capabilities like commercially available SUAS, closed-loop communications networks, etc.

If the theoretical scenario is that a primarily vehicle-based enemy is coming to "herd people into FEMA camps" and maintain and defend a rural stronghold, debating whether you need an NGAL a MAWL or if "something else" will do for small-unit dismounted patrols would not, IMHO, but a top tier item of considerations, as: A) it probably won't make that much of a difference in the limited engagement scenarios they'd most likely be facing, since they're probably not planning on standing and fighting a numerically and logistically superior force, and B) it would make more sense to worry about making roads and avenues of approach impassable and fixing or otherwise canalizing the enemy. Trading pot shots with the U.S. military is the worst way to run an insurgency, because that we know how to deal with, and it rarely went all that well for the insurgents, it was all of the other methods which proved most effective and has led to the loss of will in so many recent and not-so-recent engagements. Any former infantryman should know--shooting at an infantryman is more often than not going just going to excite them, if you want to demoralize them and get them to stop fighting, you've got to find another way, that's irregular warfare.

And then, finally, to a point that was already brought up--assuming the plan is not going into the "Boog" with the intent of martyrdom, while an insurgent force may start with one to two man teams engaged in harassment and other guerilla tactics, at some point in time, the "aspiration," incidentally following along the progression of Maoist insurgency, would likely be to eventually get to the point of operating in larger, more organized units at squad, platoon, company levels and above, at which point in time, they're back to being a conventional infantry force and probably will want to equip themselves as such, in which case, what's it hurt to get it now while it's freely and readily available if the "scenario" planning for fantastical and extraordinary circumstances anyways, what's an extra couple thousand dollars on a credit card to a financial institution that will probably collapse so it'll never have to paid back anyways weighed against the years of guerilla fighting and sacrifice and struggle until the final phases when that stuff may be very much needed or at least highly desired?

The other options I guess are to plan to take it off dead American soldiers or "collaborators," or to hope that some Chinese von Steuben or Lafayette will swoop in once the end-game is in sight.

Am I being hyperbolic and I daresay sarcastic? Sure. But again, there's nothing at all discussed in this thread that couldn't be accomplished with TOR-MINI IR and an Inforce WML that would be lighter, cheaper, and lower profile than any of the "non-U.S. MIC supporting alternate options," unless desired "form factor" is a major factor of consideration.

It's convenient to say that I'm nothing more than a mouthpiece for the "institution," I check all the blocks and more of what many seem to disdain. I'm deeply entrenched in the MIC, still serving in the Reserves, GWOT vet... I'm the guy that so many don't trust.

~Augee

Can we please tone down the personal attacks? You keep taking digs at him, and that isn't really fair, especially as a site sponsor.

I don't necessarily agree on the topic of fairness, but out of respect for you and for the site and your capacity as moderator, I've gone ahead and removed any language that is personal from both my posts, and will leave direct personal address out of any subsequent discussions and responses.

~Augee

I think the bigger problem is most people do not train enough to truly KNOW if their gear choices are going to hold up.

There was a recent thread in GD where people were asking "how many rounds through a weapon before you trust it?" To me, the responses were extremely low, some saying as low as "50 rounds" others higher but the average was likely around 250 rounds.

Seriously? I rarely head to an afternoon range session with less than 500 rounds. And I damn sure wouldn't trust a new gun I wasn't familiar with (no matter the type) with only "50 rounds" through it.

"Trust it" evidently means different things to different people. To me it means trust my eff'in life on it. Not "trust" it to put 50 rounds down range that one time a year Bubba goes to the range.

I think if you have had problems with that particular type/piece of gear before, you should heavily test/beat TF out of it to KNOW. For example, I had several absolute shittake ARs in the 1990s and so did a bunch of like minded folks I know. Major jams, major problems, etc. Heard the "you gotta buy a Colt" argument from a customer and broke down and bought the nicest Colt I could find then. It also was shittake under not even "heavy" use. I walked away from that platform for a long time because of the problems.

When I first got a BCM AR, I shot on average 2,000 rounds a month through it to begin with. At first cleaning it regularly, later not so regularly. It was flawless. After about six months I believed I could trust it with my life. We own several more now, all also of which have been flawless. Having had serious issues with the platform previously, I tested this a helluva lot more before accepting it. I had "heard" these were reliable ARs, but "hearing" shit doesn't equate to KNOWING stuff also.

So here's one - what criteria are you using to establish when you trust your life to one of these imported devices? Is there a certain round count, abuse factor, etc to where it can move from a secondary platform to being part of your primary loadout?

I am just curious where everyone seems to land on this one - especially since some of the reports on the somo peq's were zero drifts past 1500 rounds. I haven't run into anything like that, so I am sincerely curious.

FWIW, I was neither recommending nor not recommending the Inforce, though I do / have owned a couple, however it was a forwarded as a low-cost, non-Chinese option (not to get into the back-and-forth of “aren’t all LEDs made in China anyways”) discussion that would provide the same or better capabilities.

Anyways, it’s your latter soapbox that’s somewhat more interesting to me

Insofar as you’re not wrong that it should have never been that way, I think that a lot of folks these days forget the context of the early GWOT, which is incidentally the context into which TNVC was born and first started us down this path.

While on the one hand, it surprises people that things like IR aiming lasers like the AN/PAQ-4 were being used as far back as Eagle Claw and in Mogadishu during Gothic Serpent (Black Hawk Down) and that the development of things like the AN/PEQ-2 and AN/PVS-14 in fact predate GWOT, for the most part, these tools were more or less reserved for SOF, and some of the more elite conventional infantry units like those in the 101st and 82nd.

But when GWOT started, there were still a lot of reserve component units, particularly non-combat arms types that still had M16A1s and M1911A1s in inventory and maybe a handful AN/PVS-7Bs for drivers, squad leaders, and platoon leaders / PSGs. Of course what we learned very quickly during the days of lining the floors of soft-skin HMMWVs with flak jackets and sandbags and that the lines between combat arms and “REMF truck drivers” and such were not as wide as we’d once believed, and it became understood that pretty much every Soldier, Sailor, Marine, and Airman who might be expected to leave the wire at some point needed to have the capability to move and fight at night, because that was the only way to do so safely, and even then not always.

The days of Pauly Shore’s “In the Army Now” Reservists and “Nasty Girls” faded pretty quickly to the point that in under ten years, even those units were packed to the gills with battle-hardened veterans.

Within that context, if you think about the number of units that went if not from M16A1s, bone-stock M16A2s to M4s equipped with KAC rails, optics, and IR aiming lasers in the space of hell, even from 2003-2008 and 1::1 AN/PVS-14s, it’s kind of not surprising that there was some sloppiness and very rough “on the job training” on how to properly employ these tools in combat, and some of these units probably had never necessarily placed a high premium on white light discipline previously (and/or had previously rarely trained at night).

Sure, did SOF and AD/RA fight and serve with distinction during GWOT? Of course. But a lot of the fighting was also done by your plumber, your mechanic, your high school teacher, your accountant, and even your stay-at-home moms, plucked from their “civilian” lives and a grueling OPTEMPO that they’d never realized they’d signed up for, and who were all of a sudden handed a green lunch sack with a PVS-14 in it and a PEQ-2 or PAQ-4 or PEQ-15 to slap on their rifle with little more than a “hope you don’t die, LOL.”

And while I now know that it was an issue that had been identified a little bit prior to that—I didn’t even start thinking seriously about adversaries having NV capabilities and how to address that until a PVS-14 went missing from a sister platoon in 2007 that was never recovered while downrange, and started running a JPoint above my ACOG and preaching “passive aiming capabilities.”  

As a matter of fact, I think those unseen economies of scale in the cost of production of say, an ATPIAL, probably forever affected people’s sense and understanding of what it actually costs to build, develop, and design a fully duty ready and MIL-SPEC rated MFAL system—at one point, the government price for an AN/PEQ-15 was a decent bit under $1,000, however, the government, and law enforcement, and international companies were also buying so many of them that the government had to award a second-sourcing contract for the AN/PEQ-15A not just to meet the demand since L3 couldn’t produce enough of them fast enough, but as a backup in case there was some sort of production delay or some sort of other issue that would prevent them from delivering one time and to spec, and all of these factors heavily influenced the “go-to-market” pricing on both the DBAL-I2 and ATPIAL-C when we introduced those to the market, forever calibrating people’s pricing expectations at what, in retrospect, was an unrealistic point because of the unprecedented and unlikely-to-be-repeated economies of scale that existed at that time to totally equip a fully engaged fighting force from scratch.

The MAWL for example, has been an extremely popular product for one of its type and class, but probably the total production numbers of the MAWL since it introduced in 2016 are less than the number of AN/PEQ-15s produced in say 2008 alone.

Anyways, I got off on a tangent, though the point stands that economies of scale are real and the cost building a truly “government rated” laser, that will not only meet, but is certified by the proper independent testing laboratories and standards is a lot higher than I think a lot people realize.

My main point was that “what we saw early in GWOT” was never really “the way it was supposed to be” or the “right way of doing things,” and that’s why the kind of training and education that TNVC was and is providing were so valuable (and I wasn’t part of TNVC at the time, but I was and am one of those reservists and aware of TNVC), and to be honest, why our emphasis has always been so much on “the best, duty-rated gear, don’t buy cheap crap” because a) there was so much of that cheap crap out there at the time, and b) in many cases, including by myself, that gear was being purchased to supplement shortcomings in issued equipment and being actively used in combat (lot of crazy ITAR violations those days too… and a lot of folks got their hands slapped and more over it, hence why so many companies have tightened that stuff up so much since then).

But again, got off topic, sorry, I’m a ranter.

Point: It was never “supposed to be,” and never should have been the way it was during early-GWOT, but we as a force and a nation got caught collectively with our pants down so to speak, and we had to find a way to make it work.

~Augee

Eh, at the risk of getting “off topic” again, I’m not sure I buy that.

Yes, some awesome and fearsome technologies and capabilities exist out there that theoretically give some weight to your assessment, so it’s certainly not that I’m saying what you say is not possible.

However, short of committing to MAD, it’s not necessarily rational or practical in a Clausewitz-ian sense of “war is an extension of politics by other means.”

The thing is that most of the time, wars aren’t fought over random pieces of land for no reason, and in many cases, obliterating anything within a 500x500m area may render that area no longer worth fighting for—usually there’s some sort of critical key terrain, whether that’s a piece of infrastructure or resource, or even just a populated area that is either important to you, your enemy, or both.

And then at that point, you’re back to Heinlein and Starship Trooper, who was of course more than well aware of both the future implications of technology to warfare and nuclear weapons / MAD, but who nonetheless IMHO correctly stated, (paraphrased) all the awesome and fearsome technology may be important, but at some point, at some time, the infantry needs to put boots in the mud in order to gain and hold ground.

To that end, today, right now, effective infantry I² capability is a critical component to having a viable, offensive, expeditionary capability that can seize and hold ground, which again, we can bloviate about transonic missiles, aircraft platforms, drones, but T-800 aint here yet, and the only way of effectively saying “this ground is mine” is to put regular human dudes on it, who need to be able to move, maneuver, and fight.

And I think the Chinese know it too, which is why they’ve placed such a priority on analog I² capability lately, which is frankly a little out of their traditional wheelhouse—but digital’s not there and you can’t maneuver troops with thermal. Meanwhile, we’ve flooded the Pac Rim with high quality analog I² capabilities, not just our own forces there, but SuperGain PVS-31Ks and GPNVGs for Korea, and you Aussies who are allowed performance almost as high as what’s available to U.S. SOF, and they’re way behind and they know it.

And the thing about analog I² tube manufacturing, at least when you’re starting out, is that it’s a numbers game, and being able to make a handful of 2500 FOM tubes is not really that useful in a strategic sense, however, being able to make 10,000 1800 FOM tubes? Now that’s a strategic offensive capability, even if they’re “just” Gen. 2. The thing about I² tube manufacturing is that it’s not terribly efficient unless you’ve really refined the process, yields are low and wastage and fallout is high, and when you look at the NNVT (Norinco) tubes that are being pushed out all over the world and flooding commercial markets, they’re generally around 1200-1400 FOM, and you realize they’re in a similar place to where ITT and Litton were 20-ish years ago, when the U.S. domestic commercial market started opening up, yes, in part to subsidize the production and manufacturing costs, but even more so to have an outlet for the vast amount of fallout that you get in order to produce a militarily viable number of decent tubes.

And I don’t think they intend to take 20 years to catch up…

All of that is to say in the end, that I think it is a very valid conversation to have, even in a conventional military context, of how to leverage capabilities and “what is really needed” to shoot, move, and communicate with I² and I²-related tools in a new technological environment.

~Augee