Army continues to own the night: Enhanced Night Vision Goggle III ready for troops

The U.S. Army has placed an order for new night vision devices that will help safeguard its battlefield dominance in the dark.

A collaboration between BAE Systems and the U.S. Army has paid off with the success of the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle III and Family of Weapon Sight-Individual (ENVG III/FWS-I) program. Military officials were so impressed with the program that a $97 million order for the devices was placed this Spring.

“I’m super impressed with how fast this is coming along, and I’m so excited it’s going to be getting into our soldiers’ hands pretty quickly, remarkably quickly for our usual processing,” Fox News defense specialist Allison Barrie said Thursday. “Why does it matter so much? We want to make sure that our soldiers have the very best technology to dominate the night. We want to make sure that they’re still owning the night and not on the receiving end of enemies being able to see better at night than we can.”

Ms. Barrie said the ENVG III/FWS-I technology provides troops with the following benefits:

• Soldiers will no longer need to switch between night vision goggles and weapon-mounted thermal sights to engage an enemy.
• Wireless technology allows a soldier to “see” what the rifle “sees,” which negates the need to look through a weapons sight.
• Ultra-sharp images remove the need to ’paint’ targets with lasers.
• The new technology does a better job of seeing “through” obstacles “like dense foliage.”
• ENVG III/FWS-I weigh less than previous iterations of the technology.

A monocular used by troops even allows them to “shoot from around a building corner” or “above their heads with accuracy while safely tucked behind a giant concrete barrier,” Fox News reported.

“That’s an incredible advantage,” Ms. Barrie said. “That sort of precision, the ability to be able to see so precisely with such clarity, will really enable our soldiers to distinguish between someone who’s a threat and not a threat. … It doesn’t really get much better than that.”