Guys,
It's great to have a healthy skepticism, all for it.
From Karl:
One other point about CJ's apparent lack of enthusiasm for lights is that his background in Special Forces is probably not conducive to lighting up enemy targets with white light behind the lines!!!! A good way to get "lit up" yourself! And if the enemy has lots of night vision equipment, active IR probably ain't a good idea, either.
I will say this.
We have been supplying our latest generation of WeaponLights to those boyz in the "Stans" - Millennium Universal Tactical Light Systems. Totally modular and can scale up and down the power scale.
Recent report back. They are using them extensively.
Why? The use of Night Vision Devices only does not provide enough positive ID of friend or foe.
Taliban forces look, dress, arm themselves and move about the terrain exactly as friendly indigenous forces.
Therefore, they are approaching targets (often on horseback), Light them em up with our higher intensity lights, then "Lighting them up again" if need be.
We also were told that the horses are reacting violently to the sudden surprise of light and tossing riders!!!
I cannot give you the exact forces involved, but you can probably figure that out for yourself. When this is over, I will get and post more explicit details.
We have just shipped a boat load of our higher intensity handheld to them (M6, M4 and M3T) to further exploit this tactic.
Lights, lasers, IR, optics, red-dots, whatever are all part of the matrix and must be intelligently applied to each and every particular operation.