Night fighting is a wholly unique and different experience from daytime fighting. It presents a challenging environment to master effectively. For the user intent on “owning the night”, as the saying goes, you will want to strongly consider investing in a good set of night vision equipment. Complimenting NVG’s is the addition of an IR laser, which is in this authors opinion, an absolutely indispensable piece of equipment for effectively and discretely (to non-NVG users) aiming your rifle at night.
Within the realm of night vision equipment and gear, the axiom “you get what you pay for” holds very much true. The differences between Gen III goggles and Gen I, for example, are quite apparent to the casual observer of both. In computer graphical terms, it’s somewhat similar to “draw distance” – whereas a Gen I represents limited viewing distance and fairly basic image rendering. Gen III presents you with a full image and excellent viewing out to the far horizon. That’s not to say Gen III is as anywhere as good as viewing with your standard 20/20 Mk. 1 eyeballs in full daylight. They will not really “turn night into day” – but they can come pretty dang close to doing so in certain cases. Most NVG’s render the image in green tones or in some cases black and white or amber / yellow (if you have a special filter attached or white phosphor tubes, etc.)
Perhaps the most noticeable thing about wearing night vision is your depth perception – or lack thereof. This makes navigation something to carefully consider (more on that below).
Common to all NVG devices: camouflage identification is especially troublesome. MultiCam and Woodland, for example, look very similar at all but close range. At extreme distances, you will be hard pressed to determine the difference between MultiCam, Woodland, ACU, Marpat, or any other camouflage for that matter, save pure solid colorways such as OD green or black. Magnified NVG optics can assist in distance identification and work, of course.
Regarding types of NVG’s, there are several designs out there worth considering. All have advantages and disadvantages. My personal setup is the Gen III Pinnacle MV-14 (MUM-14) monocular style. While this does not cover both eyes like the older PVS-7 design, it does offer a few advantages: light weight, smaller profile, and it allows your non-dominant eye to adapt to the night. This latter advantage can be very useful when transitioning from certain dimly lit environments to full-dark ones in addition to serving as your night adapted “backup” in the event your NVG dies. Contrary to the popular misconception in Hollywood of someone shining a flashlight or flipping on a room light at someone wearing night vision and their subsequent cries of agony as the NVG burns up on their face – Gen III Pinnacle tubes do not suffer this due to auto-gate technology that automatically dims excessively bright light sources. I’ve given my set a little extra protection with a small piece of 1/4″ thick Lexan taped to the outside of the objective lens for any errant BB’s.
There are also dual-tube and quad tube setups – with costs (and weight) escalating quite dramatically with the more tubes you add. As you may be wearing these for some hours at a time, it is always my recommendation to keep the overall setup as trim and light as possible. Many players, especially of the HATO persuasion tend to overburden their heads with excessive ‘greebling’. A good counterweight pouch is often all that is needed in additional accessories.
Fighting with Night Vision
With a good nighttime setup, you can create an incredible amount of havoc on the field – especially when your foes aren’t as equally well equipped. There are several ways of approaching the prospect of shooting your rifle with NVG’s. I will begin by noting that I personally do not use or recommend NVG compatible red dots. Bluntly put, these are a largely a waste of money. Yes, you can make an NVG compatible optic work in a fashion, but at the expense of bashing the ever-living-hell out of your NVG’s objective lens. You will also soon discover major focusing issues. While the optimal focus for your NVG is usually at near-infinity, this means that your typically crisp red dot will be an ugly blurry mess that is obscuring your foreground. EOTech’s are the worst to work with at night as they have an ungodly large reticule. Some users recommend swapping your NVG monocular to your non-dominant eye in order to aim through the red dot with your night adapted one. This is only marginally effective, if not clumsy. You will still bash the crap out of your NVG against your rifle. Consider this: You have almost 6″ – 7.5″ of NVG equipment extending out from your eye(s). When shouldering a rifle as you normally would, it’s hard not to bash it into your gun.
In my experience, the real key to an effective setup is a quality IR laser. Here you can get away with anything from a relatively easy to obtain Class I device to the harder-to-find Class III stuff. At the ranges most Airsoft events take place in, Class I lasers are more than adequate and powerful enough. The best units offer integrated IR strobe, laser, and IR floodlight functions. For room clearing in pitch black conditions, this is a fantastic tool to use. The integrated IR light is also powerful enough to severely blind any other NVG’s out there. Moreover, you do not need to obtain a cheek-weld or even a proper shouldering of the rifle in order to effectively use an IR laser. You can fire it from the hip if you so choose. I prefer to tuck the butt into the lower half of my armpit and look over the top of the weapon myself. This provides good physical contact and maintains a fairly steady weapon for aiming purposes without receiver-tapping your NVG’s.
Again, you get what you pay for here. A lot of Chinese made IR lasers have shoddy electronics, poorly soldered connections, fragile switches and tend to lose zero quickly. Quality Class I IR lasers will set you back multiple hundreds of dollars for relatively basic units. For those who might not want to invest the coin on an IR setup, a quality tracer unit can achieve pretty good success in conjunction with NVG’s. Just remember: tracers work both ways…
As I mentioned above, identifying friend from foe can be difficult at night. For the NVG equipped, IR beacons, strobes, or flags may assist – but these can also be telltale beacons to the enemy as well. I’ve been to a couple of events now where the opposing team had IR strobes equipped on their helmets. Presumably they weren’t aware they had a flashing IR beacon on their helmets as they weren’t wearing NVG’s, nor was anyone else on their team. But they sure made good targets for me to shoot at!
On a related note, this also means that much like those who would be equipped only with a flashlight, you must also observe strict light discipline. This applies to any visible lights you are using in addition to any IR lasers or lights as well. You can’t always presume the enemy does not have NVG’s equipped. Finally, any methods for silencing your equipment and your rifle are all good ideas to implement too. Because natural eyesight is at a disadvantage during night, your sensory awareness may increase in other ways, such as sound and smell. Noise in particular becomes a tell-tale giveaway of one’s position more often than an errant flashlight burst does.
Navigating at night isn’t the most fun. Without NVG’s, you will likely be stumbling around a lot. You could certainly use a flashlight – but at the obvious risk of giving yourself away to the enemy. NVG’s make this task a lot easier. But as I mentioned previously, depth perception can be noticeably off. This can be overcome with some practice, and you will soon get used to it. One also has to be able to have a hand free to operate the focus from near objects up to infinity or at least set it in the middle-range for general use.
Primarily because of navigational considerations, I do not favor dedicated weapon-mounted NVG units. Past experience has shown this is an extremely tiresome and clumsy process. One must constantly raise and lower the weapon, manipulate the focus, and navigate obstacles simultaneously. Spend about 10 minutes doing this and you will soon see what a joke it becomes. Hands free is the way to go.
Wearing Your Night Vision
An important item to consider is how you wear your night vision. The USGI issued headstrap contraption is a pain in the ass (pardon my French) to put on and adjust properly, especially at night. My experience has been that dedicated helmet mounts still reign supreme. In the bad old days, I used a PASGT Kevlar helmet for this task. While this worked, it wasn’t perfectly ideal. The helmet was quite heavy and cumbersome, and I would suffer terrible headaches within minutes of wearing it. Despite upgrading it with the Oregon Aero gel-pads and Team Wendy H-harness setup, it was still less than ideal and I only succeeded in putting off the headaches for a latter time. I decided a more modern helmet was in order, and so I purchased a FAST helmet replica. While I prefer to buy the genuine gear as much as possible, I wasn’t particularly interested in waiting 9+ weeks and shelling out close to a grand for the real deal. I also didn’t require ballistic protection either. The repro helmet is fortunately well-built and quite stable, even while running. The other nice thing about a helmet is that it saves your head from knocks and bruises (which seem to occur more times at night than day.)
Following a good method of wearing your night vision, you need a good way of mounting it to your helmet. Most FAST style helmets come with a replica Ops-Core VAS Shroud, which is a fantastic improvement over the old style mounts that came with the PASGT kit. Unfortunately, as most replicas go, the shroud is almost never built to spec. It’s extremely tight (to nearly impossible) fitting the USGI military issue Norotos ‘Rhino’ mount into the shroud. I swapped it out with the real deal Ops-Core VAS shroud – which is also good piece of mind as it doesn’t feel like cast pot metal. This was a much better improvement. I plan to eventually swap out the Norotos ‘Rhino’ arm for a Wilcox L4 when I get around to it one of these days.
Last of all, make sure your setup is compatible with your eye protection. One of the drawbacks with eye-pro is that it will somewhat narrow your view through the NVG. This is because you can’t seat the goggle completely against your eye as you normally would. Additionally, you will want to make sure to use clear lenses versus smoke, yellow or other tints. Anti-fog coatings are a must, and be forewarned that any exterior or ambient lighting will cause more lens flares off your eye-pro than a J.J. Abrams film.
Never Forget the Basics
Lastly, lest one becomes too reliant on technology, it’s always good to brush up on the basics of navigating and fighting with your eyes and a good old flashlight. There is a lot that can be written on the topic of night fighting – enough to fill a small book really. The tactics and techniques for fighting at night aren’t limited to those encompassed on a single blog post. Techniques, methodologies and equipment are ever-evolving and improving. I highly recommend reading up as much as you can on the topic and if possible, attending some quality training classes… and also, get out there and work it! Nothing beats doing it for real. Too many read or watch movies about training, but never actually train. Training will illustrate a great deal to you regarding your tactics, techniques, equipment, physical limitations, and more. Your first Airsoft event with NVG’s will be an eye opener that will reveal much about your current strengths and weaknesses.