The Operational Strengths and Weaknesses of Military Night Vision Equipment

The UK Ministry of Defence (2003) recently argued that the use of night vision equipment improves ‘shared situation awareness’ and ‘greatly enhanced operational effectiveness... in surveillance and target acquisition in close combat’. They are ‘particularly effective in the urban environment’ and in support of ‘marshalling and logistic maneuvers at night’. However, there is good evidence to suggest that this equipment poses significant risks to military personnel. For instance, the US Army’s Black Hawk helicopter fleet has suffered more than 20 fatal accidents in its 29 year service history. Approximately half of these occurred while pilots were wearing night vision devices. This observation is supported by the results of the US Army Safety Center’s review of rotary winged aircraft incidents. As can be seen in Table 1, there is a significantly higher accident rate for operations involving the use of night vision equipment. These observations have been replicated by recent studies into incidents looking at military driving and tank operations (Ruffner et al, 1997).