Night Vision: Why Active Aiming is Superior to Passive Aiming 

I wasn't invite when I got addicted to that elcan stuff. This is just the nail in the coffin.

ywnbam

@@BrassFacts This has been a Brass Facts brand Brass Fact.

Jk, hahaha... unless

@@BrassFacts it's ok I prefer active aiming more. The likeness I go up against a enemy with NV for home defense or hunting (if a deer has nods and a AR I'm fucked anyways) is probably zero

Don't mind me borrowing that little idea of a decoy!

Yea i was gona say this. Ive used my ir emergency beacon as a distraction before. Worked like a charm, but i was in a wooded area and cant say it would work that well in flat, arid, desert land

What if… you have some guy shine IR light to spot target from one side, then have the rest of the team engage with passive aiming from, say, 50 m to the right?

​@thomaszhang3101 would keep the bulk of the force safe but also makes the guy with the light a massive target.

@@thomaszhang3101 the two pronged response to this is "yeah setting up even a normal visible flood light on a known enemy position would work but would be a weird level of set up instead of just killing them" and also that it would light up the entire environment and make everything easier to see since light spread like crazy under IR

Or everyone is and it's a massive database.

for sure. I more wanted to make a point that IR laser vs a NV adversary isn't a "gonna get kilt in the streetz" if you use it smartly. As mentioned I think in a ambush type setting: long setup time allowed, precise first shot, etc. passive still has a place, amount other things. Tools in a tool kit. Yeah FP lasers are niche. A lot of time you don't need it. But then suddenly *bam* the civ laser settings just are worthless, and FP is useful.

To be fair, nobody you were shooting at had NVG.

​@@noahfriend320 kinda the most critical part of this equation

@@noahfriend320 not necessarily true. Even people using nods operationally who have to assume their adversaries have nods are still using their lasers, they're just controlling power levels more carefully and treating them like white lights.

back then we were fighting a very technologically disadvantaged country more recently we’ve got some night vision and thermal scopes that connect wirelessly with a window inside the nods so we can see what we’re aiming at with no lasers or even having to be behind the gun

@@destroyerofgearnot really the answer to the right question. We use them like that because we can’t use passive aiming. They aren’t letting basic guys use red dots with night modes. It’s not because it’s better at night. Fighting at night isn’t a priority.

It's been a year, but I'd like to ask for a data driven comparison of occluded shooting vs passive vs active with round counts and hits recorded if possible. I know it kind of deviates from the style of this channel and would be a better fit for GarandThumb or 9holereviews to do, but you are just small enough to listen to comments that are decent, and big enough for your opinion to carry. You put out good work so you doing this would be some valid results in my eyes. PS- ACOG works pretty nicely for occluded shooting imo.

@@luckyomen I've actually done a occluded shooting video. With a 25 yard zero you're off (but on target) at 10 yards by 15yards you're missing. by 25yards you're sailing the shot. SupersetCA has discussed and shown occluded shooting in action. And shows results. You can only be sure of A zone hits to about 10 yards. 95% of the time people are discussing occulded shooting, they're actually occluded scanning, and before they press the shot, they switch out of it. Or they're so close the concept doesn't really matter.

That's weird. We shot 50yd targets for night qualification in Infantry school at Camp Geiger with ACOGS and did pretty well across around 10 shots per 3 attempts. I don't remember the particulars as it's been almost 10 years, holy shit where has the time gone, but we must have had some technique to compensate. I remember the reticle being on the target still as I saw it. But this is anecdotal evidence at best. I'll have to give it a shot once I can get ahold of a monocular. Your vids have helped me better understand tech I knew how to use but didn't know how it worked fully, so thanks for that. I'm currently in the market and outside of budget your info is helping decide on what to buy for a good start into lights and lasers.

For the record, we shot using our standard 100yd zero. If that helps.

​@@luckyomen I'm pretty sure you were either both eyes open shooting or occluded shooting but switching right before you shot. Occluded shooting (to be sure) Is when you superimpose the reticle over the eye not behind the gun. Logic dictates there has to be a divergence because the image your off eye shows can't be the same as your rifle eye. A easy way to check. Tape to optic such that is completely covered (can't see through it, only see the reticle blacked out). And then shoot. That would be true occluded shooting.

See you in the gulag brother

# just2Athings

Fellow watchlist king

Interesting. Must have been real old NV. Modern NV doesn't mind a headlamp.

@@BrassFacts this was in 2000 lol. Can you recommend a reasonably priced but SHTF kind of monocular NV? Maybe an IR laser too? Also a long lasting NV red dot. Pretty please. Do this old soldier a solid. Will strobes mess with a modern NV?

@@harold1733 Could be that it was Gen3, you want Gen3 + (not really anything else you can buy). Light will still be semi blinding. But in the same way it's blind to a camera, not really a big deal. Most modern Pvs14 housings with contain a modern gen 3 + tube. IR laser, is a huge can of worms, perhaps a LS321 from holsun, but I suggest watching my NV content. NV dot; eotech is the best. EXPS (not xps) 3-0.

@@BrassFacts i was wanting to avoid eotechs due to the battery life. But I guess I can haul that around as well. I took all that gear for granted. I didnt know those things were so expensive. People would lose NODs all the time in deployment. I shouldve taken one home, but alas, pesky morals. Thanks dude. Great channel.

@@harold1733 a Aimpoint T2 works as a alternative if you care about bat life. The Holosun AEMS is also quite good

sure. Bring passive. I think it's great to have in the toolkit. But much like saying to someone without nods (but a white light) "don't use white light, it gives away your position" it doesn't really speak to the full picture. You use active when it makes sense. You use it in a disciplined fashion, and you use it when you need to. Most people innately understand the give and take of using a white light, the exact same logic applies when you go active. And much like with a white light, there at times where you simply need to use it. Nods being all seeing in the dark, or you having the ability to use passive beyond 5 -15 yards is very often not a thing.

LOL! I can't even consistently get anyone to train NV with. There is not anyone in my area who has NVG.

make enough for the comment section

That’s perfect, you can watch the video while you’re on the toilet after

a big thing that helped me with NV shooting. It's essentially very similar to daylight shooting. So if you're having issues with say: A reload. It's actually indicative of your daylight reload needing some work to. If you're having issues snaping the laser on target. you're probably having poor presentation issues. Having issues shooting fast? poor recoil control. etc. Nv shooting seems to exasperated small faults in our ability.

yeah, thermal is real nice. For civs it's still somewhat expensive in the US, but I'll be doing thermal stuff soon hopefully.

@@BrassFacts You just gotta accept that half of your gear weight is batteries from now on.

not mine. I don't have a IR Strobe. Though I think it's more for training

my issue with that is that it assumes you just leave the laser on. In reality I'm only using it for 1-2 seconds to engage the target. So the report of my muzzle flash is roughly on par with the laser. It also vastly overestimates the effectiveness of passive aiming. As past 50 yards, even eotech suck.

@@BrassFacts In real world combat you rarely PID your target, and your laser is on for way more than 1-2 seconds. The whole idea of 1-2 seconds on, shoot at a c zone siloutte, & dispace is not applicable 95% ofthe time. ln the real world you are not on shooting at c zone silouttes. You're returning fire in a general direction, at best at buildings, windows, or some land markers. Often you are reconing by fire, and firing to supress an area, and firing on suspected enemy positions, often based on someone else's observation and orders that are passed to you. You are also not the only one doing this. Your whole fire team, squad and platoon is doing this as well. And your adversary is also not shooting at silouttes. They are engaging your immediate area, building ect. with, not only well aimed precise rifle fire , but from crew served weapons, rockets, and indirect fires, and they don't need your specific location to inflicted losses, but rather the area where you team is. In general I feel guys who train alot of individual tactics, and drills, can become very myopic, and neglect the realities of small unit tactics & real world combat, where alot of what you think you know goes out the window. In reality emergency reloads, close range rapid engagements, transitioning to a side arms, rapid target transitions, are irrelevant to most combat scenarios, yet this is what everyone focuses on because it's fun, while neglecting far more important skills.

​@@mohawk3371 I want to first say that I agree with what you are saying. But I want to point out that there is a lot of middle ground between the kind of warfare you are describing, and the kind of engagement Brass is talking about. Certainly with the experience you seem to have you can understand there are absolutely situations in warfare, gun fighting, SHTF, whatever, where you do PID your target. No every fight is platoon level between equipment matched groups. In fact, one of the big reasons the extremely well equipped and trained US military has so many issues with asymmetrical forces is specifically because they avoid those types of engagements. Over the GWOT we've seen first special forces and then regular infantry become lighter and faster, and utilizing more active intelligence to strike targets strategically. A civilian doesn't have access to all of those intelligence gather tools, but some are available and civilians tend to have the advantage of fighting on home territory. I agree that if we are talking about fighting a 1st world military power, active aiming with IR could be a problem. But if you're walking up to a FOB with an eye of sauron in the middle, they picked up your thermal 2 km away. You're already fucked, and you won't even get a chance to use your IR laser before a drone buries you. If you are coming at the idea of conflict from the perspective I think Brass is demonstrating, then finding yourself in the kind of engagement you described means you already lost. Based on my experience in the USMC, I would argue that movement is more important than you are implying. Even if movement for individuals in a unit is limited by accurate fire, the mobility of the whole force is key in eliminating that threat before "lucky" hits, indirect fire and shrapnel crew through the unit that is pinned. Radios and other people are what's going to save you in that situation, not passive aiming. That being said, I agree that civilian training can breed myopia. Brass is already doing better than 9/10 civilian shooters because he's going out on real terrain instead of stagnating on flat ranges with a 25m max distance. Like I mentioned, communication/movement with another group of people and those kind of multiple unit tactics are often completely ignored because it's not as easy or fun as shooting a cardboard target. It also requires a group, which many people don't have, and free time together, which many people don't have.

@@clutchclutch13 To clarify my perspective was small unit assymetric warfare against a technologically and logisticly supperior force. In this context using active aiming is not realistic from either a logistics, or survivability perspective. More broadly I don't think enough people think about the tactics, or train the techniques that would be relavent in those situations, but I gree that Brass is doing better than most, and I generally agree with most of your other points.

Something else to consider is in a civil conflict, there is a mix of low tech and high tech OpFor. Organized and unorganized criminals are a potential OpFor. That is but one example of what I'm thinking about. There is a total ecosystem in conflict zones.

yep, your accuracy falls off of a cliff the farther out you are. Simply on the virtue of not being able to see your target clearly.

This comment hasn't sparked discussion because most people watching this channel are not soldiers training to fight a peer enemy. They are random civilians trying to protect themselves and be as best equipped as possible to handle as many threats as possible. I'm not going up against a peer military.

@@fujimi715 absolutely true. At the end of the day, I was just commenting on what I think the “best” setup would be, but not everyone has $40k+ to have that kind of setup, including me. But if I had to pick between the two.. active aiming is much easier and faster in my opinion.

@jasonbourne1119 we are kind of spoiled here in the US with equipment. The US is the only nation where every infantry soldier has NV, IR, body armor, optic, ect. Russia and China don't. Look at Ukraine. Most Russians don't even have an optic. How often have you seen NV? And they were supposed to be the number 3 military in the world. Most random citizens, like me, are just trying to survive and will try to get away if they think they are going up against a well trained well equipped force. I'm trying to get the fuck out of there, not engage. For some reason I can't do passive aiming through my dominant (right) eye. But I can run the PVS 14 on my left eye, mostly use active aiming, but can switch shoulders and aim passively easily with my Eotech. Not sure why.

@@fujimi715 most military’s (including the US) don’t even set up their equipment to be properly applied. I’ve seen soldiers from across the globe have all the good equipment to own the night, but the knowledge on how to use that equipment properly ie. Zeroing lasers, was severely lacking. Long story short, for many conventional forces, especially foreign, they may have the equipment, but do not know how to employ it to maximize end results.

@@jasonbourne1119 those foreign forces don't even have the equipment....they just say they do. Russia said they were the most powerful military in the world. And then we see them having fake body armor and iron sight AKs from the 70s

sorry, I guess I never said it outright. This was IR laser + illum. I almost never use the laser solo

@@BrassFacts Thanks for the clarification, I thought it was IR only. This def has me rethinking my bias towards passive and being too concerned about IR signature.

Yea not sure why people even think about this. In a survival situation you're not going up against a well equipped well trained team.

you overestimate how good a ecoti is. But yes, thermals are a bitch to contend with

I don't know anyone who has that

I don't overestimate the ecoti, I have one I also have a couple other garbage units ie the breach to name one but I also have a couple n-vjsions and an eotech which make up for the crap units I bought I know their limitations and uses so I would say if you got the money they have their place

Not that much. The laser, and nods last 3-5 nights. The biggest batt drain is from my inforce helmet light. That will go through 2 CR123s. The handheld i have on me will generally also get drained. So really just 2-3 Cr123s. I use recharable olight cr123s (gasp!) so it actually doesn't hurt me that much.

worse.

my new favorite commenter !

This isn't true. IR lasers are extremely noticeable under NVGs. Have you ever used them?

That’s a cool idea!

I wear contacts, it's functionally the same as glasses. Like with scopes, NV devices allow you adjust focus/prescription. If you really wanted you could run without glasses and then adjust the nv device to your eye.

I wish I could wear contacts. Or get lasik. How would glasses work with a single tube NVG setup? Hell, with a single tube, how does that work in the first place? It always looks like people have it over their left eye while shooting using their right…

yeah works fine. I'd put it over your dominant eye as a general rule of thumb.

See, that’s the opposite of what I see in videos, even your first one. Guys will have a tube over their left eye but shoulder their weapons on their right.

@@Akinius that use to be the conventional wisdom (military) but I believe most people say to just f-it and go dominant. Try both.

Most people train to look cool. Not to actually fight

the same. Humid less so, but with fog or dust ofc. That's generally say; it's situational dependent, but like a white light, just giving up on the capability is silly.

I would save. a basic PVS14 can be had for around 2000-2500. And it's not even complete shit.

I would like to know where you are seeing PVS-14s for $2k?

Define your requirements. NV allows you to better navigate at night and operate on the move. See through glass. Do you need to do those things? Thermal doesn't show you the trees, cars, transition from short grass to long grass (unless those things are different temps), and can be defeated by glass. So what do you need? Where I feel thermal shines in a civi context is when in a static location looking for heat signatures. Is that what you need? Define what you need to do. THEN get a tool which does that job. And consider what has been said here. White lights get the job done when it's all you have. So hope you don't get shot in the beginning of an ambush or attack. If you survive the initial furball, you and remaining friends light it all up with white light and go to town.

@@woodsghost9088You can see a lot more with thermal than you think you can.

Ever find out?

so yes it's actually a noticeable thing. but your dot needs to be cranked to 10. but it's usually the other way around. RDS usually project it out the back onto your shirt if you left it on a daylight setting. And lpvos, and prisms project it out the front. It's not really a big deal. just don't have it cranked. and even if you do, it's insanely faint.

Thermal is good for scanning. NVG is good for movement

no. Almost none of my passive shooting is via the MRO. I've had it for a very short time. (2mo). Mainly: Aimpoint pro which ive had for about 5 years. and A eotech which I had for about 4 years.

I feel like you're making an argument for my point, not against it. If the opfor don't have nods, and you need to engage; why not use active? You're right, I'm looking to avoid a fight. But this isn't a discussion of picking a fight. This is a discussion of; once you've committed to the fight. Active or passive? Can you identify someone beyond 50 yards. Absolutely. Will someone shot react? No, maybe?. But his team for sure would.

@@BrassFacts Nothing wholly against active aiming. My point is that with time on your side due to stealth you don't need to worry about making quick shots. It's tough to know all the details of a situation however, there's more to gain by eliminating your signature than attempting to minimize it with quick use of active aiming. You can't discuss tactics without discussing the ROE of the situation. You mention other OPFOR reacting to you engaging one of them. That may be true if they have NODs but unlikely if they do not. In addition to that, if you are unaware of the total quantity of threats and their locations you're playing a dangerous game by engaging. Hence the comment about NOT ENGAGING. If the advantage of NODs is one sided there is no obligation to commit to any engagement. If the advantage of NODs is one sided there's no reason to rush the engagement should you believe you need to engage. Active aiming offers a speed and ease of use advantage, but it isn't necessary for what anyone outside a team/unit would ever need to exploit.

yep that's the point of this discussion. I'm making the point that it doesn't really give away your position as much as most people say, and the speed trade off is worth it. Obviously passive is a tool in the kit. Just saying active might not get you "kilt in the streetz"

@@BrassFactsI mean muzzle flash and potential suppressor heat have the potential to compromise your location. I think the problem is using the laser at range, the longer the ranger the longer it has to be on to line up the shot. I can use my lasers as long as my nods will let me, using a eotech at those ranges is more difficult if not impossible. None of this really matters when you factor in ISR platforms as the can see a lot at night, especially using thermal imaging.

@@BrassFacts Why is speed a factor? If the threat does not have NODs the threat has no clue where you are, you have time to aim passively. If it's a "fair" fight then it will be a race.

@@225degrees because follow up shots matter.

@@BrassFacts Not really. I doubt anyone who has been shot is still highly motivated to press the fight against an enemy they can't see..

it would, but it'd be a form of occluded shooting; you'd get some pretty intense diverging

@@BrassFacts do you think it could be trained into a usable technique for passive aiming?

@@forestnfren8146 up close sure. but then i'd argue the downsides of a laser are almost entirely mitigated As you go out further you'd get a increasing point of divergence. You could zero with that in mind, but then you'd have a bad day optic.

@@BrassFacts Hmm. i dont even own anything yet just thinking about best use for least money. The thought was if i got used to running l2 on left eye - i could then run a clip on thermal on the gun and not have to flip up my night vision. The ghetto passive aiming was a icing on the cake/cope for having tube on left eye. Obviously i wont know until i play around on my own, but i like to dream. Appreciate the insight

(disappointing because I have one pending rn.)

most cans will have a 1 frame flash. It's exaggerated on camera.

@@BrassFacts ah good to hear.

The Sandman has a notorious flash signature even with 5.56 end caps. Their new Sierra has wayyyyy more reduced flash signature, there's also a ton of other suppressors with better signature than the Sandman however the Sandman is an amazing can.

it's uh... not painted. Black is the painted color by the factory. The "tan" is what happens over time as the color burns away.

@@BrassFacts no way. Well ok then!

No such thing as aiming down a magnified optic with NVGs on.

the naming comes from if you're letting off a active observable emission (laser) and passive/no emission (optics).

@@BrassFacts oh I'm not arguing, and I listened to the whole video. I get it I guess, but its deceiving I think 🤔. But I'm just a random bot on the internet so who cares lol

PID is still a requirement.

@@syntaxerrorsix3137 that's why you have a PVS 14 with a 3x afocal magnifier for at distance engagements. Thermal is infinitely superior to picking up targets, PID'ing them (you can tell what the target is, but not see a face of course) and engaging.

Let me know if you found it

Is it even brass? Maybe it's just copper, i can't tell anymore

steel facts? polymer facts? HDPE Opinions?

Not at night you didn’t.

First!