Aside from completely agree with Ron's post (you beat me to it), what also strikes me as odd is this kid is in a LIGHT infantry unit. LIGHT infantry does NOT HAVE BRADLEYS. They have LPCs (leather personnel carriers, more commonly called boots). Why would he be looking for an IR through non-mil channels for a vehicle the unit would not have. Something sure sounds fishy about this. An IR light isn't something secret and hard to find in the Army, especially for an active duty type. I also wonder why the kids is doing all this through his personal AOL account, not an Army account. Maybe he really is trying to do something his boss requested, but it just sounds strange to me.
As for IR headlights. I was leaving my battalion TOC (tactical operations center) one night following an order briefing. I was enroute back to my battery location to brief my Platoon Leaders and Sergeants. It was very late and very dark. Both my driver and I were wearing our AN-PVS-7 NVGs (night vision goggles). As we were driving out, it appeared someone had on their service drive. I took my goggles off and it was totally black. Put the goggles on and realized the HMMWV behind me (the maintenance tech) had an IR headlight installed and turned on. It was blinding with my NVGs on and invisible without them.
The downside is, as Ron stated, the bad guys also have NVGs and when you switch on the IR headlight/spotlight, it makes a great BEACON to attract unwanted attention.
Jim Rice
US Army 1981--Present
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 04 2001 - 08:10:46 PDT