Monday, February 14, 2005
NVGs
So I'm sure everyone has seen those CNN images of fighting in the Persian Gulf; grainy green images with tracers streaking into the sky and ghostly figures running across the desert. This is night vision. It seems pretty damn cool until you actually try to use it to maneuver.
The first difficulty with american night vision goggles is the fact that you are looking through a single lens of moderately small diameter. This causes two problems; tunnel vision and a total loss of depth perception. Your field of view goes from about 180 degrees down to 40 and you are left groping around for objects which you can't really tell how far away they are. They are really damn cool, but they have their limitations.
With this in mind, the Marine Corps built a night laboratory here at Camp Barrett, designed to show us that while it is difficult to maneuver in the NVGs (night vision goggles), it is not impossible. A twenty foot tall steel building, approximately 75 feet by 75 feet square, houses an obstacle course which contains numerous rooms which you must crawl, climb, run, and at one point, slide through. It was definitely one of the more fun things we've done here.
The goggles are designed to be clipped onto our helmets, and they do that well, but they are not the most comfortable things to wear. They cause your helmet to become unbalanced forward and add weight. Once I got them adjusted and fitted to me I felt a little better, but the feeling of tunnel vision is a little disconcerting.
The course starts in a room with some simple obstacles for you to get used to the goggles. The feeling of tunnel vision is immediately bothersome because you don't know what is in the room with you. Turning your head from side to side to check out your surroundings doesn't really ease your concerns, you still feel like you have blinders on. You want to take these blinders off your eyes, but doing so would only make you more blind. I flipped up my goggles at one point and no shit, it really was pitch black in there. I imagine the feeling of being blind would be worse if there was really someone out there who wanted to shoot me.
After a couple of minutes with the goggles on, I felt a lot better with them on. My fire team mates, Olson, Kelly, and Smith, did not feel so good. They were struggling with the goggles a little more. The goggles must be manually focused by turning the front lens of them right or left, but I found that by leaving them focused about twenty feet in front of me, I could see obstacles in my path and I could still maintain awareness of what was further in front of me. I really started to have some fun in there, it was like a big jungle gym. We climbed up rock walls, down ropes, up chain ladders, across narrow high walls, through several rooms, tunnels, a school bus, and a drug lab. I wanted to go back and do it again, but they wouldn't let me do it. Darn.
One of my team members, Lt. Olson, didn't have such a good experience. After clearing the school bus, we were out in the open and were attacked by a simulated machine gun position. We were told to take off running for cover when we heard the machine gun; a little joke from the instructors. I saw the wire, but Olson did not. Across what looked like a break in a fence was a steel cable about 1/4" in diameter. Hard to see in NVGs when you are on the run. He hit it full speed right across his middle and damn near flipped over the wire. I didn't get to see it, but the rest of the platoon was watching on TV monitors in the waiting area and they told me all about it. Oh well, guess we all get to do something stupid here.
Tomorrow is an early day, we're firing the M203 grenade launcher, the AT4 and SMAW anti tank rockets, and some other surprises I'm not fully aware yet. We're also firing something at night but I don't know what that will be either. Guess I'll find out when I get there.
The first difficulty with american night vision goggles is the fact that you are looking through a single lens of moderately small diameter. This causes two problems; tunnel vision and a total loss of depth perception. Your field of view goes from about 180 degrees down to 40 and you are left groping around for objects which you can't really tell how far away they are. They are really damn cool, but they have their limitations.
With this in mind, the Marine Corps built a night laboratory here at Camp Barrett, designed to show us that while it is difficult to maneuver in the NVGs (night vision goggles), it is not impossible. A twenty foot tall steel building, approximately 75 feet by 75 feet square, houses an obstacle course which contains numerous rooms which you must crawl, climb, run, and at one point, slide through. It was definitely one of the more fun things we've done here.
The goggles are designed to be clipped onto our helmets, and they do that well, but they are not the most comfortable things to wear. They cause your helmet to become unbalanced forward and add weight. Once I got them adjusted and fitted to me I felt a little better, but the feeling of tunnel vision is a little disconcerting.
The course starts in a room with some simple obstacles for you to get used to the goggles. The feeling of tunnel vision is immediately bothersome because you don't know what is in the room with you. Turning your head from side to side to check out your surroundings doesn't really ease your concerns, you still feel like you have blinders on. You want to take these blinders off your eyes, but doing so would only make you more blind. I flipped up my goggles at one point and no shit, it really was pitch black in there. I imagine the feeling of being blind would be worse if there was really someone out there who wanted to shoot me.
After a couple of minutes with the goggles on, I felt a lot better with them on. My fire team mates, Olson, Kelly, and Smith, did not feel so good. They were struggling with the goggles a little more. The goggles must be manually focused by turning the front lens of them right or left, but I found that by leaving them focused about twenty feet in front of me, I could see obstacles in my path and I could still maintain awareness of what was further in front of me. I really started to have some fun in there, it was like a big jungle gym. We climbed up rock walls, down ropes, up chain ladders, across narrow high walls, through several rooms, tunnels, a school bus, and a drug lab. I wanted to go back and do it again, but they wouldn't let me do it. Darn.
One of my team members, Lt. Olson, didn't have such a good experience. After clearing the school bus, we were out in the open and were attacked by a simulated machine gun position. We were told to take off running for cover when we heard the machine gun; a little joke from the instructors. I saw the wire, but Olson did not. Across what looked like a break in a fence was a steel cable about 1/4" in diameter. Hard to see in NVGs when you are on the run. He hit it full speed right across his middle and damn near flipped over the wire. I didn't get to see it, but the rest of the platoon was watching on TV monitors in the waiting area and they told me all about it. Oh well, guess we all get to do something stupid here.
Tomorrow is an early day, we're firing the M203 grenade launcher, the AT4 and SMAW anti tank rockets, and some other surprises I'm not fully aware yet. We're also firing something at night but I don't know what that will be either. Guess I'll find out when I get there.
// posted by Josh @ 2/14/2005 07:57:00 PM 
