Vietnam Thermal Imaging

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Imagine standing watch in Vietnam after midnight.

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Beyond your position,

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the jungle is almost featureless.

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You can hear movement,

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but sound alone cannot tell you what is there.

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A branch shifts.

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A shape crosses an opening.

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Is it an animal?

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Another patrol?

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Or someone approaching your position?

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In darkness,

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recognition can arrive dangerously late.

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Night vision promised to change that.

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Raise a scope,

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look through the eyepiece,

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and shapes hidden from the naked eye could become visible.

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but visibility was never the same as certainty.

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Decades later,

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a darker story would circulate.

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Soldiers supposedly saw entities through experimental red goggles.

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To understand that claim,

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we first need to understand the equipment they actually used.

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The Vietnam War made nighttime observation a pressing problem.

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Patrols,

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defensive positions,

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and installations faced an enemy able to exploit darkness.

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A useful warning might be only a glimpse of movement.

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Flares and searchlights could illuminate the battlefield,

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but they changed the scene for everyone who could see the light.

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The military also wanted ways to observe without broadcasting

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a visible beam.

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One important answer was the starlight scope.

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Among the best -known Vietnam -era examples was the ANPVS

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-2, a bulky electronic sight used for nighttime observation and on

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weapons.

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These were specialized instruments,

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not a universal issue of modern helmet goggles.

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Their size,

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weight, and usefulness varied.

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For troops carrying them,

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the extra capability also meant extra equipment.

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An Army study of long -range reconnaissance units describes the PVS

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-2 as cumbersome and sometimes impractical in the terrain.

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Having access to night vision did not mean every patrol could use it effectively.

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The essential idea was image intensification.

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Take a very faint image and make it brighter.

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Moonlight,

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starlight,

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and other available illumination provided the starting signal.

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A starlight scope worked passively,

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without projecting its own illumination beam.

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That distinction mattered.

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Observing a scene did not require lighting it with a searchlight.

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What the user saw was an electronically produced image.

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It could reveal silhouettes and movement,

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but it did not restore the scene to ordinary daylight,

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with familiar colors and effortless detail.

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And amplification needed light to amplify.

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Dense cover could leave little illumination reaching the ground.

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A scope that helped across an opening could be far less useful beneath a dark canopy.

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Vegetation was still an obstacle.

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Night vision did not turn leaves transparent.

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Something hidden behind thick foliage could remain hidden,

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even when the leaves themselves became easier to see.

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Bright light introduced another problem.

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The P -VS2 manual warned about intense light entering

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the lens.

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Excessive illumination could trigger protective shutdown.

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The device had limits in both darkness and brightness.

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Then came the ordinary demands of field use,

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carrying the instrument,

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protecting it,

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and keeping it serviceable.

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The jungle did not become easier to move through because electronics had made

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it more visible.

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The advantage was still significant.

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A defender who detected an approaching figure earlier had more information

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than one watching unaided darkness.

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Night observation became part of a wider system of protection.

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Observation also had to become communication.

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Someone needed to describe what had been seen,

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where it was,

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and how certain the identification was.

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A scope supplied an image.

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People still interpreted it.

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Think about that responsibility.

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A shape is visible,

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but its identity is unclear.

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The consequences of guessing are immediate.

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Better equipment can narrow uncertainty without eliminating the judgment

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required.

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Night vision also reached the air.

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In early 1968,

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QT -2 reconnaissance crews used starlight scopes over Vietnam,

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reporting boats,

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truck convoys,

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and campfires through green and black imagery.

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This is where the modern red -goggle legend often

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places its characters,

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helicopter crews looking into darkness and seeing something they

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supposedly could not see with their unaided eyes.

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In versions of the story,

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shadowy figures or frightening creatures appear through the equipment.

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Some tellings describe terrified servicemen refusing to use it.

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Those are claims within the legend,

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not established events.

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Other versions suggest the goggles revealed another dimension,

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or a hidden population of entities.

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That is the supernatural interpretation.

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It requires evidence beyond the fact that military night vision existed.

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The story may end with the military withdrawing the devices and suppressing

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the explanation.

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But a secrecy claim is not a substitute for a traceable record

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of the alleged program.

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A useful investigation asks specific questions.

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Which model?

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Which unit?

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What date?

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Who recorded the incident?

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Can a witness account be traced to its original source rather than repeated

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through anonymous retellings?

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The documented starlight scope offers a concrete check.

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Its Army Operators Manual describes the characteristic green glow

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during operation.

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Green imagery was already part of this equipment's design.

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That contradicts the simple story that Vietnam night vision started red and

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became green to stop supernatural sightings.

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The familiar green display has a documented technical history.

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Infrared is also not another word for a red picture.

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It describes radiation outside the visible spectrum.

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The color of a display is a separate property of the viewing system.

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Likewise,

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changing a display's color does not by itself add a new sensing ability.

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A claim about detecting something extraordinary needs an explanation of what signal

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the device actually receives.

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In the sources reviewed for this video,

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I found no authenticated military report confirming the red goggle entity

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story.

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That is a limit of the evidence,

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not a claim to know every soldier's experience.

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There is still an interesting human question.

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What does an unfamiliar image feel like to someone trying to understand it?

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A figure can look unsettling without being supernatural.

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Consider an ordinary shadow.

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Its apparent shape changes with the light and the surface beneath it.

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An alarming outline may become understandable once its surroundings are

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visible.

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Low detail introduces another uncertainty.

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If an image cannot clearly separate a branch,

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a person,

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and the background,

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the observer has less information to work with.

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A confident interpretation can still be wrong.

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These are possible sources of misidentification,

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not a diagnosis of unnamed veterans.

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Without a specific,

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documented encounter,

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we cannot establish what someone saw or explain it with certainty.

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A firsthand account deserves to be examined on its own terms.

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What was directly observed?

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What was inferred afterward?

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What changed as the story was repeated?

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Those distinctions keep testimony meaningful.

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For this story,

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the strongest documented subject is the challenge of seeing in darkness.

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The equipment expanded what soldiers could detect while leaving them responsible for

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deciding what the image meant.

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Later generations made night vision smaller,

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more practical,

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and better integrated with other equipment.

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The helmet -mounted systems familiar from modern military imagery belong to

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that continuing development.

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The distinction matters when looking at photographs.

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A modern soldier wearing night vision goggles can illustrate the concept,

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but that image cannot establish what a Vietnam -era soldier carried.

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Thermal imaging adds a different capability,

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detecting differences in heat radiation.

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Some later systems combine it with image intensification.

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A thermal image should not be confused with a Vietnam -era starlight view.

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The development continued because seeing after sunset remained valuable.

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The enduring engineering challenge was to give people more useful information

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in more conditions with equipment they could actually carry and use.

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Return to that position in the jungle.

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The scope may reveal a person where your eyes saw nothing.

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It may reveal only part of a person.

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The difference matters enormously.

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What soldiers saw in the dark depended on the device,

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the light,

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the terrain,

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and the observer.

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Night vision changed the battlefield.

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Understanding what appeared through it remained a human task.

Vietnam Thermal Imaging

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