It is only expensive because you want it and they know how vital nighttime dominance is to their contingencies.
It will be funny watching FLIR drone videos of boogies trip because they never trained to see the world through a 40° fov.
Digi night vision is getting better at time goes on
Analog or digital I’m getting a set someday
TFW you spend $15k on something designed before 9/11 only to have Chinese thermal optics make your tubes look like toys from the 90s
Tell me more brother
Choice of sub seems a bit weird?
It’s always mass production. They’re not making them by the millions. Messing around with glass and vacuums is a pain
Iirc there’s like two draw towers domestically and they get the OMNI contracts. Not to mention it’s hardly an easy process, I imagine the manufacturing yield is pretty rough when you’re melting and stretching glass bundles while trying to maintain alignment.
There’s a reason why big specks and dark pinholes are ‘acceptable’ in everything but aviation use, the cost skyrockets for flawless optics.
I mean…they are making a lot of them, but they’re earmarked for militaries and other actual users. Civilian builds are almost always limited drops of factory second tubes put together by small businesses from my understanding.
