The U.S. Army is testing a new generation of night-vision goggles
that would let soldiers see through smoke and dust, in complete
darkness. The technology required for these goggles already is available,
but both Army officials and manufacturers are not sure how long
it will take to produce “combat-proof” devices, or whether
the service will be able to afford them.
At least two programs are under way today to develop next-generation
night-vision goggles.
One of them aims to combine traditional night-vision technology,
called image intensification, with thermal sensors. Image intensification
amplifies non-visible particles of light to a level of brightness
that the human eye can detect. A thermal, or infrared, imager senses
the temperature differences and warmer items appear brighter on
a display.
The fusion of both technologies would result in night-vision goggles
that merge the strengths of image intensification—a clear,
sharp green-tinted picture—with the advantages of infrared—the
ability to see practically under any environmental condition. Green
is the color that the human eye sees most easily.
Secondly, another night-vision goggle program—spearheaded
by the U.S. Air Force—would provide military aviators with
panoramic, wide-view goggles. Unlike conventional devices that restrict
the pilot’s side-view to a 40-degree angle, the panoramic
goggles come with a 100-degree field of view. The Air Force plans
to start buying these goggles next year, but their price tag makes
it unlikely that they will be available in large quantities in the
foreseeable future.
The Army is considering buying the panoramic goggles, but it has
made no financial commitment yet.
A higher priority for the service today is to develop the “sensor-fusion”
goggles, said Lt. Col. Cindy Bedell, the Army’s product manager
for soldier sensors. The combined image-intensification and infrared
goggle is known as ENVG (enhanced night-vision goggle).
The Army wants to be able to field these as soon as possible, she
told National Defense, because they potentially could translate
into a huge battlefield advantage for U.S. soldiers. With current
goggles, “you can’t see in overcast starlight [conditions]
and down,” she said. At lower light levels, “the range
and quality are degraded.”
The ENVG, if developed successfully, would be fielded to infantry
troops, military police, traffic controllers, surveillance units
and any force likely to engage in urban combat, Bedell said. The
infrared sensor is needed to see through the glare of city lights.
Under such conditions, the image-intensification tubes get overloaded,
creating a “halo” effect that makes it difficult to
see.
The Army is evaluating three ENVG prototypes, each developed by
ITT Industries, Northrop Grumman Corp. and Insight Technology Inc.
The service has not yet decided which of the three prototypes it
will buy, if any. “We haven’t finalized the acquisition
strategy,” said Bedell. All three designs are being tested
this fall, she said. The tests are not under normal battlefield
conditions, she explained, because the prototype goggles aren’t
“hardened” enough. “We’ll only give them
to soldiers who will treat them relatively carefully.”
One problem that Bedell noticed in the ENVGs was the poor alignment
of the optics, when the thermal images were overlaid with the image-intensification
images. The contractors, she said, “are having difficulty
in getting the alignment.” But the Army expects that problem
will be fixed in due time, Bedell said.
The more important issue they must address now is the design. The
optic assemblies in the prototypes are too heavy, for example, she
said. That can be problematic when “you have this hanging
off your head.”
One way to lower the weight of the ENVGs will be to switch to smaller
image-intensification tubes, said Jim Harris, vice president of
ITT Night Vision, in Roanoke, Va. Current goggles have image intensifier
tubes that are 18 mm in diameter. In the future, the Army would
like to see 16-mm devices, he told reporters visiting the company’s
manufacturing plant this summer.
Producing the smaller tube is no small feat, given the complexity
of the manufacturing process. Each 18-mm tube crafted today at ITT
requires 400 manufacturing steps, said Vince Thomas, vice president
of operations. For the ENVG program, ITT partnered with the Raytheon
Co., which makes the infrared sensor.
The Army has not yet settled on whether the ENVGs will have a monocular
or binocular design. “There is no final decision on that,”
said Bedell.
Even if the Army ends up buying the ENVG, not every soldier will
get one, she noted. They will be assigned to selected units, since
they are probably too expensive for the Army to buy in mass quantities,
she added.
The service has about 300,000 night-vision goggles in the inventory
today, even though the official Army requirement is 416,000.
While the standard Army goggles cost about $2,500 a piece, the
ENVG will be at least $8,000. That unit price, however, is based
on a large production run. The prototypes are much more expensive.
Be-dell recalled that the first iteration of the Army night-vision
go-ggle cost $15,000 each.
Power Supply
One of the technical challenges in the ENVG program is the power
supply. The current models are battery operated. “We are looking
at the logistics of batteries,” she said. “We are exploring
options.”
Conventional goggles can run 50-60 hours on two AA batteries, but
as the Army adds more electronics, the power requirements can surge
dramatically, said Harris. “When you start adding infrared
detectors, you need more battery capability.” In the future,
he said, “We are going to rely on fuel-cell technology.”
A second option proposed by ITT for the ENVG program is a “higher
risk” technology called DOE (defractive optical element) relay
system, said Harris. Rather than placing the sensor in front of
the eyes, the DOE system moves the sensor to the side of the head.
“We use a relay optical lens to present the image to the eye,”
he added. “The performance of DOE is not as good as [the original
ENVG prototype], but it’s a radical concept we wanted to try.”
Regardless of which ENVG system it picks, “the Army really
wants to go to fusion,” said Harris. This program, he said,
“will be our first entrée into the fusion business.”
In the long term, the company is anticipating opportunities for
new technology development, as the Army moves forward with the futuristic
soldier-modernization program called the Objective Force Warrior.
The goggles for the OFW would take sensor fusion to the next technological
milestone—where soldiers would be able to transmit images
from their goggles to the command center, Harris explained. These
goggles could be available by 2010, if the Army decides that it
wants that technology.
ITT is spending about $3 million a year on new technology for the
Army’s next generation of night-vision goggles, said Harris.
Among the company-funded systems is a so-called “video ENVG.”
In a video-goggle, the image would be converted into an electronic
signal and presented on a head-mounted display in front of the soldier’s
eye. “The government is not sure whether this will be an improvement.
So we are spending our dollars on this development,” Harris
said.
One technical hurdle in the project is the availability of small,
high-resolution displays, he noted. “We typically have a pixel
count on our camera of 1280x1024. They are just now starting to
make displays at that pixel count.”
Bedell, the Army’s project manager, seemed skeptical of the
video-ENVG. “That technology has not been miniaturized,”
she said. The Army has deployed a comparable technology, in the
form of the Lightweight Video Reconnaissance system, a tripod-mounted
sensor (made by the Raytheon Co.) that can take night or day images,
condense them into code packages that can be sent over a secure
radio. The U.S. special operations forces are the heaviest users
of the LVRS system, said Bedell. In the future, she said, that technology
should be made “smaller and more integrated, so you can pick
the image you need to use, for the conditions you are in.”
The technology that helps to convert images into electronic signals
comes from a small company that ITT acquired in August, Xybion Electronic
Systems, in San Diego, Calif. The firm specializes in video electronics
engineering. Xybion’s key technology is a miniature CMOS (complimentary
metal-oxide semiconductor) camera, which can be described as a “camera-on-a-chip”
electronic imager, said Harris.
“Right now, we bond the CMOS detector to the screen,”
he said. “We are working on new technology where we actually
remove the screen and put the CMOS detector inside the tube.”
As to whether the ENVG would be adapted for aviators, Bedell said
that the Army still is undecided. “The question is, how important
is that forward-looking infrared [FLIR] to a pilot? Does he need
that information for flying?” Those answers likely will come
from the Army’s aviation school, in Fort Rucker, Ala.
Panoramic Goggles
The Air Force program office for air combat, meanwhile, is conducting
a separate competition for the production of the panoramic night-vision
goggles, which come with four tubes. Regular goggles have two tubes.
The Air Force Research Lab, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base,
Ohio, developed the original goggle design and proved its performance
in various tests during the past several years.
These goggles do not feature sensor fusion. But instead of using
the Army’s standard 18-mm image-intensification tubes, the
Air Force requested 16-mm tubes, which ITT is producing in low quantities.
The smaller tube was designed to keep the weight of the panoramic
goggle as low as possible.
“The 16-mm tube will allow products to be much lighter,”
said Harris. He claims that only ITT can make those tubes today.
The only other U.S. manufacturer of image-intensification tubes,
Northrop Grumman Corp., declined to answer questions from National
Defense about their ongoing military night-vision programs.
An Air Force spokesman at Wright Patterson Air Force Base could
not provide details on the panoramic goggle competition, other than
an expected contract award date, sometime in October or November.
The two competitors vying for the panoramic night-vision goggle
award are Insight Technology, of Londonberry, N.H., and Vision Systems
International, based in San Jose, Calif. ITT would supply the 16-mm
tubes to the winning team.
The Air Force budgeted $2.9 million in fiscal year 2003 for development
and low-rate production of up to 20 panoramic goggles. Once in production,
each would cost about $50,000.
The Army, said an industry source, is choosing to “wait and
see” before it makes any purchasing decisions.
This source also said that the Air Force was considering awarding
Northrop Grumman a contract to speed up the manufacturing of 16-mm
tubes. “Northrop Grumman is about a year behind developing
the 16-mm tubes,” the source said. There is concern within
the military services that having only one supplier of tubes would
make it difficult to keep prices competitive.
That same rationale drove the Army to split its latest night-vision
goggle procurement for ground troops between ITT (60 percent) and
Northrop Grumman (40 percent). ITT got 100 percent of the aviation
procurement award. The entire procurement, called Omnibus VI, could
be worth up to $450 million.
Vision Systems International, a joint venture of Rockwell Collins
and Elbit, is the manufacturer of the next-generation air-combat
helmet, the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cueing System. For the panoramic
night-vision goggle contract, VSI teamed with Kollsman Corp.
The integration of the night-vision goggles with the JHMCS is a
key requirement in the program, said Louis M. Taddeo, director of
business development for VSI.
The JHMCS is a “look and shoot” helmet that employs
the pilot’s eyes to aim weapons and enables “over-the-shoulder
engagements.” It can be reconfigured with day or night sensors,
including the panoramic goggles, said Taddeo.
He noted that VSI has supplied panoramic night-vision goggles to
both the Navy and the Air Force, for testing. Although both services
would use the same technology, each has different priorities, Taddeo
explained.
The Navy is testing the goggles on pilots flying the F/A-18E/F
Super Hornets and F/A-18C/D Hornets. “The Navy is focusing
on the JHMCS integration with the panoramic night-vision goggle,”
he said. “The Air Force is more focused on non-JHMCS aircraft,”
such as transports and tankers.