South San Francisco, CA (March 2012) - American Technologies Network, makers of military, law enforcement, security and outdoor night vision and thermal applications, have raised the bar in providing digital thermal imaging viewers in an affordable, rugged, pocket-sized package. Offering superior performance, the OTS-30 and OTS-60 are monocular viewers built around state-of-the-art uncooled thermal imaging technology. These thermal imaging units are built with MIL-SPEC optics and an 800 x 600 OLED color display. The digital features include menu functions such as reticle type and color selection, windage and elevation adjustments, polarity single-button modes including black on white, white on black and 5 different color settings.Now, the unit is north of $6K, which while at first blush might seem to be less-than-affordable, but thermal imaging viewers can easily hit north of five digits. And it got me to thinking: What about laser sights? In 1984's Terminator, the iconic laser sight atop the AMT Hardballer (made by SureFire!) required an external power supply and dwarfed the 7" AMT in both size and price. Today we have a dizzying array of laser sights available, from the Rear Sight Lasers of LaserLyte to the guide rod lasers from LaserMax or the grip-mounted lasers from Crimson Trace. All are unobtrusive and affordable - dare we say mainstream?
It will be interesting to see how long it takes the price of thermal imaging type scopes to drop as they become as widespread - if it happens.
That is all.
4 comments:
It'll happen. Right here on my desk I have a small active IR spotting scope. I bought it for $200 at the Discovery Channel store five years ago. Considering what this technology sold for in the Vietnam era, I'd say chances are very good that passive thermal imagers will come down to less that a grand in 5 or 10 years, maybe less.
Get me a good thermal for less than $1K and I'm on it like white on rice.
There's no law against hunting at night here in NC, just against spotlighting. I could get a .300 Blackout barrel and a thermal and go hog hunting at night.
Now if we could only get suppressors legalized for hunting.
and before someone corrects me, you can spotlight in NC, but only in certain areas and at certain times.
I'm reminded of the movie Navy Seals(1990), where the sniper (codename: God) could flip his scope to thermal and shoot the bad guys through walls.
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