Today´s combat units are to a grooving extent using Night Vision Devices (NVD´s) to enable stealthy combat operations at night. The Nammo IR tracer will improve the situational awareness during firing where the normal tracer will disturb NVD´s. The IR tracer solves the problem with blooming disturbances in the NVD.
The latest IR technology adopted to the calibers 12.7mm, 7.62mm and 5.56mm ammunition makes the IR trace totally invisible to the naked eye but can clearly be seen by the warfighter wearing NVD´s. This helps the warfighter to be in full control of the fight and have a advantages with a clear view of the scenario.
Up until now the warfighter has used conventional tracers to see where rounds impact at night. Conventional tracers in night combat poses several problems:
* Fire balls/Halos that covers the target or target area
* Illumination of own forces increasing exposure to the enemy.
* Backtracking of tracer light.
Muzzle flash typically saturates the NVD´s sensitive optics so that the gunner loses the line of sight. Hence spending more ammunition, and also might have difficulties to see when the target is defeated, or not, and if it is time to stop fire. It is also important to be able to identify new targets during the continuos firing, changing targets, and the gunner do not want to expose himself to hostile fire for longer than needed.
Infra Red tracer ammunition with its long burning time is useful for the warfighter using any weapon in these calibers on long distances. It can be weapons mounted on a helicopter, vehicle or carried and the user need to fire his weapon at long ranges using NVD´s.
The direct ignition is useful on short fighting distances were the tracer can be used to direct the fire even without using the sight.
The IR Tracer gives no disturbances in own NVD´s and cannot be tracked back to the firing position. The target position can be observed during the firing for maximum hit probability with a minimum of ammunition used. The direct trace function enables the gunner to use the tracers at short distances. The unit firing can then clearly see that all targets in an area is being fired at, leaving no surprises.
The tracer emits its tracer light in the near infrared wavelength just outside the visible light. This area is well covered by the modern NVD´s that is used and the tracer will be seen as perfect tracers in the NVD´s but will be completely invisible to the naked eye.