The US Army is set in 2018 to deliver brand-new night fighting abilities to the troops. Rifle-mounted thermal sights, coupled with a new set of WiFi-enabled goggles, will not only make soldiers more accurate shooters at night but provide them with the information on whether or not to use lethal force to begin with.

For decades, US troops night vision has given them the upper hand against adversaries. Troops are better able to defend themselves 24 hours a day, robbing enemy forces of the cover of the night. US forces also regularly conduct attacks from the ground and the air, using night-vision devices to locate and destroy enemy forces.

The first part of the new system is the new Family of Weapon Sights-Individual, or FWS-I. FWS-I is a new thermal sight, the lightest and smallest ever developed by American industry, mated to an Army-issue M4A1 carbine . The sight weighs just 1.5 pounds and attaches in front of the Army-issue M68 red dot sight .

FWS-I puts a thermal imager on the rifle, lining it up with the weapon sights. This allows the user to see the M68's red dot against the view of the thermal imager. Like digital cameras, FWS-I is also capable of digital magnification, increasing the distance soldiers can identify potential enemies. This will also help the Army in sorting out combatants from civilians in a wartime situation.

The second part of the system is Enhanced Night Vision Google III , or ENVG-3. A helmet-mounted night vision monocle, ENBVG-3 weighs two pounds, including four AA batteries.

Thermal imager goggles aren't new, and thermal sights aren't new, so what's the "killer app" aspect of the system? Both the sight and the googles are WiFi-enabled, allowing the weapon sight view to appear in the googles themselves.

There are tons of potential uses for this on the battlefield. Soldiers can hide in cover and stick their rifles out, using the thermal imager to get a good look at their surroundings. Firing from the hip, or even from behind cover is possible as a soldier equipped with the system always knows where the bullets will strike. Individual soldiers can observe at long distance, at night, and fire quickly and accurately with their weapons if necessary.

Still, as everyone who has a laptop, tablet, or phone knows, wireless networks can be finicky and tend to go down just when you need them the most. They can also provide a portal for hackers into networks and individual systems. For that reason the wireless system is NSA-approved, and even if the wireless link goes down or is switched off, the soldier still has the sight mounted on his rifle and his night vision monocle.

Current plans call for the Army to start deploying the sight/goggle combo to ground forces starting in 2018, with 2 out of 3 troops in an infantry platoon receiving them.

Via military.com

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