New 'Thales' night vision binoculars (1 Viewer)

[tehri]

An interesting video (activate english translation) in the labs of Thales, where are presented the brand new night vision binoculars for special forces, pilots... Army.
Another company, just like Safran, at the forefront of these optical technologies.
These binoculars and this monocular, are impressive, and by their lightness and their small sizes.

 

[etudiant]

Thales is France's premier defense electronics supplier. They make world class gear.
Sadly it will probably take a decade for this kind of performance to become commercially available.

 

[Binastro]

More like twenty years or more.

I supplied a Canon 50mm f/0.95 lens for a low light aurora camera about 1980 with British sensors that worked in apparently total darkness.

Maybe similar performance is available now commercially.

There were also French lenses at that time that cost over £1million in today's money.

I don't know the cost of the Thales devices, but maybe £30,000 to £150,000 as a guess.

Regards,
B.

 

[fazalmajid]

Thales is France's premier defense electronics supplier. They make world class gear.
Sadly it will probably take a decade for this kind of performance to become commercially available.

Probably never, it will be restricted to authorized users like law enforcement, and subject to export controls, so it does not fall into Russian or Iranian hand (the Ukrainians are at a huge tactical advantage over the Russians due to being equipped with night vision gear supplied by the West), even though nowadays the Chinese make night-vision gear every bit as good as Western firms.

Disclaimer: Patrice Caine, the CEO of Thalès, was a classmate of mine...

 

[etudiant]

Probably never, it will be restricted to authorized users like law enforcement, and subject to export controls, so it does not fall into Russian or Iranian hand (the Ukrainians are at a huge tactical advantage over the Russians due to being equipped with night vision gear supplied by the West), even though nowadays the Chinese make night-vision gear every bit as good as Western firms.

Disclaimer: Patrice Caine, the CEO of Thalès, was a classmate of mine...

Hope you're mistaken, effective night vision is surely a very attractive market niche.
Hunters in the US have been spearheading the commercial release of that technology. Earlier Gen 1 and 2 level gear is now readily available.
As you say, the Chinese are probably our most likely source for the more advanced stuff, assuming the current tech embargoes end soon.

 

[wllmspd]

In the EU Photonis make the best intensifier tubes (that others then build systems around), but for low light performance the best US filmless tubes beat them. I have a friend who has compared a number of the highest spec tubes he could find. The military are just after lots of good enough tubes rather than just the best of the best tubes where the manufacturing yield would be very small and costs very high. I note “onyx” being mentioned, which is one of the photonis intensifier models. Twin tube bino gives much nicer views than from a single tube as the brain can average the sparkly noise from the 2 images. Good intensifiers (anything made in the last decade or two) will turn night into day as long as there is a little bit of light, but cloudy skies and deep tree cover doesn’t hinder them much. When it gets real dark well away from towns then the latest and highest spec will begin to pull away.
Thermal is where the developments are (long, medium, short wave etc, zoom, greater pixel counts) as shown by the long distance gps enabled device. Having a fusion of intensifier and thermal is also potent as the end of the video shows.
High spec photonis kit is available, it just costs rather a lot (export controlled of course). Russian stuff is pretty much equal to the EU (from what I understand). Also the west is a good source of NV kit…. How much did we leave behind when we withdrew from the Middle East?!
US hunters seem to have mostly moved across to thermal as it might and day blows intensifiers away as far as spotting warm things at night from long distances.

Peter

 

[dries1]

"the Ukrainians are at a huge tactical advantage over the Russians due to being equipped with night vision gear supplied by the West"

I just got ripped for being political, so perhaps we could leave out the conflict here, all things being fair.

 

[jurek]

Interesting gear, but I feel a thermal imager is better for birding, because birds and mammals "shine" on the background. At night, an owl is still a dull object hidden between dull branches. Even if you know where it is and shine a spotlight of normal light at it, finding it can be hard work.

Maybe in future there will be handheld versions of things like very light-sensitive camera used in several wildlife films recently, which reveals also colors of animals at night. These would be better than thermal from the point of quality of observations.

 

[wllmspd]

Colour digital night vision will remain a dream for a while. Low light camera with some covert infrared light as seem on the TV is your best bet. Thermal is THE answer for wildlife at night as you’ve noted. For public available/affordable stuff pixel numbers are slowly climbing, but we still lack a cost effective zoom lens on them, which would really make them much more potent.

Peter

 

[Mono]

Full colour night vision has been around for a while. No mention of price anywhere!

Color night vision

color night vision for custom integration x27 worlds most sensitive highest performing lll UHD cmos day/night VIS-NIR camera system 1064nm IR

www.x26.com

 

[wllmspd]

Always look out for what the moon is doing when digital night vision is being demonstrated. The best conditions would be well away from any light pollution and with no moon. Rather a lot of digital demos have a large amount of moon. The best commercial units are the Pro model from Sionyx, plenty of comparison videos on YouTube.
Peter