I want to talk about IR illuminators on sniper rifles I'm not talking about IR
lasers I'm not talking about visible lasers I'm talking about infrared
illuminators. If you're going to run night vision on your rifle your
precision rifle for example in the jaw for Fallujah why are you running night
vision well duh it's so I can find bad guys in the dark and so I can mix metal
and meat together right now sometimes you looking round at night
your windows there's still shadows at night you got moonlight coming in
sometimes it's hard to see into those shadows it's hard to see through windows
sometimes there's just not enough starlight or moonlight to illuminate the
areas that you need to see I'm not saying to use the IR illuminator all the
time especially if there's the threat that the enemy has night vision however
use randomly sporadically push button on/off you can use that IR illuminator
to quickly illuminate an area to identify to clear it real quick then I
turn my illuminator off what it's giving you is an extra reach with that optic
with your night vision where without that illuminator you may only be able to
get three four hundred meters with the illuminator now I'm able to see five or
six sometimes seven hundred meters with that illuminator you're going to use it
on the rifle don't set it up for a wide beam don't set it up for a really narrow
beam set it up so that here's your point of aim you want your illuminator with
that point aim low in the circle and you want your beam above it you want your
beam wide enough so that it covers max ordnance of your round why would you do
that I'm going to get to that here in just a second you have zeroed like that
that is now my very strong spot light that I can search now the advantage that
it now provides is now I can spot I can find targets but there's also an
additional advantage the reason why we never use night vision
before. decades ago Vietnam post Vietnam was for sniping you just could
not see well enough to identify friend or foe
okay night visions got a little bit better PVS four even the PVS two give you
a little bit more distance however for shooting long distances or
two things you could not do that a sniper needs to be able to do is you
could not read winds and you could not see trace seeing winds now our optics
have gotten so clear if you're running a good gen3 tube you're actually seeing
the grass move out there you're watching the green Shia flag start blowing back
and forth you're watching the trash blow up and down the streets you can use
those signs and you can roughly guesstimate what the wind is you run
that Kestrel men wind meter where you're at right here
the winds blown basically the same downrange at the same rough angle I can
get in the ball park with my wind call what does that leave that now leaves reading
trace my spotter needs to be able to read trace in the dark we couldn't do
that before with our old long-range ammo the old one 1/8 was 173 grain and while
had a boat tail it had a solid nose and the jacket was pulled back from the tip
you had a little lead dot on the back however one of the advantages of
switching to the warm wind 8lr it's a hundred and seventy-five green sierra
matchking weight wise does not really matter it's an accurate round but the
added benefit it gives us for shooting at night is because it's a sierra
matchking the back of my slug is now shiny copper now when I turn on my
illuminator my spotter watching with his night-vision device when I pull the
trigger and this bullet starts flying downrange
yes it's flying 2,600 feet per second however it is climbing slowly and is
going down slowly my spotter watching from the back will actually see my
illuminator reflect off the shiny copper and it literally looks like you're
watching a moth in a headlight of a car it is actually easier to see trace in
the dark past about 300 meters in the dark with that illuminator on than it is
to see it during the day in a high wind situation all right so it gives us a
great capability that it really wasn't designed for but it works great why do I
need to see trac? here's why you bring you crosshairs up you've got a
target that's let's say he's inside the window two blocks outside the mosque in
the jof he's standing there in a window you pull the trigger and the guy goes
down inside the room you're ready to high-five if you hit him yes he goes
down inside the room however if you missed him he still goes down inside the
room wh? Because a bullet just came by his head and hit the wall next to him of
course he went down inside the room however if you got your illuminator
turned on and your spotter is watching when you shoot bullet still runs downrange
except now your spotter is seeing that moth in the headlights he sees that you just
missed the guy by about six inches past right behind his head or just to the
left or to the right you see him go down in the room because your gun bucked
you're ready to reach over and high-five your spotter however your spotter goes
miss dumbass same window hold quarter mil right and you get back on target you
make your correction and you wait chances are knuckle nuts is going to go
holy cow what was that and his head's going to come back up in the same window
been there done that seen it happen it works right so it's great great
additional capability for using the illuminator right if you're in that
heist threat situation and you think the enemy might have night vision hold and
don't turn the illuminators on until we actually start that assault countdown I
have control I have control standby at that point you can turn on your loom
inators and if you've got five sniper teams around that target there's three
sentries outside all teams may be watching that same guy while the other
you walk around however if at the start of the countdown all the sniper teams
turn on their illuminators the teams you'll see while we're all covering this
one guy and without you even having to touch the radio guys will switch and
cover the other guys seeing it happen it works right so to say we're never going
to use illuminators because the bad guys have nods is you're selling yourself
short and you're taking away a great capability that we have that
the enemy doesn't right so you're going to run night vision on your long guns
you need to be running IR illuminator