Let me answer a question with a question......Once you possess this gear will you use it? Meaning will you alot money and time and other resources to attending dedicated basic and advanced level NV classes. I say this because having a tool like NV is fine and dandy but unless you get training under your belt you dont know what you dont know. Be able to maximize its use so that should SHTF you can effectively employ such an expensive investment.

If youre not going to alot energy/resources for training Id recommend not making the investment. Hows that? from a guy who makes his living on trying to get people to buy Night Vision.

I would also recommend saving your money and not buying the setup you are wanting, youre about to be severely disappointed with the performance of what youre going to get.

BTDT. Been preparing for 32 years now. This is a very common problem.

Honestly, your better off doing some training that you mentioned (patrolling, etc) and learning to work WITHOUT NV first, versus getting everyone jacked up on some poor quality 1st Gen.

Being old school, I'm still of the opinion it's better to learn to operate at night well WITHOUT NV and then later add quality NV in. Too often people aren't even comfortable outside at night, but buy NV thinking it's this magic item that will set them apart.

If other skills are lacking, they are still going to be lacking. If these guys can't change mags at dark without NV, they aren't be much better with NV.

The by product of regular training is as you get these guys training regularly, maybe attending some good schools, etc. they will SEE the cheap gear choices fail on them most likely and will then UNDERSTAND the need not to cut corners.

A lot of people get into preparing as a side pursuit without truly thinking through the situations they claim to be preparing for. The ultimate goal is to live and prevail, yet few actually ACT based on that. Making lists of shit they are never going to buy or things they are never going to do isn't preparedness. Unfortunately with all the doomsday dunskies TV shows and resulting non sense, this general idea has become skewed by those that don't know any better.

Get them training regularly and this sort of thing will work itself out over time.

Also, never forget, people WILL spend money on what is truly important to them.

Good luck.

Couple things in play here.

What is your level of low/no-light operations/NV experience? Sounds like you have decent enough gear, but how familiar are you with using it, have you had any training, classes, etc.?

Remember that in the grand scheme of things, every single guy having NV is a relatively new concept, as long as you've trained properly for it, a single guy with NV equipment leading/integrated into a team that does not all have NV can still be a very effective force multiplier, but as with anything else, these things have to be trained to be executed to best effect.

What a lot of members have already said is all true:

- The equipment is nothing more than a novelty toy if you don't train with it and use it, possibly even a liability

- For most people, operating in the dark is a whole new bag, and many people simply are not comfortable with it--in order to be comfortable with NVDs, you first have to have a certain amount of comfort without them, if you shit your pants at the first weird noise in the dark, having NODs isn't going to make you less afraid of the dark, that's just not what they do--they can make you even more paranoid, a Blair Witch Project kind of deal where you're trembling in your Birkenstocks trying to see everything all around you through a toilet paper tube of a 40^o FOV device.

- Some people simply think the equipment/capability is "cool," but don't value it enough to make it a priority/make the necessary sacrifices to acquire it--I know I sold off a lot of stuff to get into personally owned NV, I had to make the conscious decision to sell stuff that was less important to me, but was still a significant investment, very few people have $4-$10,000 to just throw around when they want something new

I'm with ya on trying to convince people who, for whatever reason, don't want to come off the cash for proper equipment--your guys puking at the price of an Aimpoint damn near gave me flashbacks.

Ultimately, if you want your buddies to "get into" NV, it sounds like more so than anything else, you're going to have to change their mentalities and make them understand what a potent tool NV is. Understand too, that you may not be successful, you simply may not change some minds, and some, let's be realistic, will never be able to afford a Gen. 3 device and the associated support equipment, it just is what it is.

That being said, a good first step to changing their minds and mentalities might simply be to do some more night training--without NVDs. Do all the things you think you might need/want to do, and do them at night. You may figure out who was never really committed in the first place just by doing this--a lot of guys won't mind playing around and being "make-believe-militia" on a bright, sunny Saturday, but will be unwilling to put in the time and effort to train nights when, especially when it's uncomfortable, they're getting tired, there's stuff on TV, etc.

From there, you can introduce the use of your own NVD once everyone's got some experience under their belts with how difficult and different operating at night can be. Guys that are paying attention will notice how much of an advantage you have with your NVD, even if you're using it in a team context without 100% organic NVDs, and if they value those capabilities, they'll begin to seek it out on their own/probably ask you for advice on how to "get on your level."

Finally, you may or may not want to introduce Force-on-Force with airsoft guns or something like that, where, once again, they can plainly see the advantages of operating with NVDs versus without.

Of course, this is not a quick, easy process, you're going to have to do a lot of work to change people's fundamental priorities in life, and you may never accomplish it. Moreover, be it military, LE, or legally armed and prepared civilians, getting a unit into fighting shape is not an easy task by any measure, this is why it has traditionally been a job for some of our most elite service-members--everyone wants to hear about door-kicking and "gangsta shit," but one of the Special Forces' core missions is advising and training.

~Augee

I'm not sure it's been mentioned, perhaps I just missed it... but someone with top-tier NV probably won't use IR illumination much unless they need to specifically look at something.

If you're outdoors with older gear that require illumination to see anything-- there's two disadvantages.  One being you still can't see that far, and the second is someone with NV is going to see you blasting light everywhere.  At 600 yards with an L3 WP 14 and a moderately clear night, I could probably miss someone walking along a treeline on the edge of an open field.  If they were using IR, it would be next to impossible to miss.

I try to avoid the super-reactionary "oh my god, if you don't have the very best and latest super-widget you're definitely going to die!!!" noise that a lot of the "tactical" industry is built on.

Use the best gear that you can acquire/afford and give yourself as many advantages as you possibly can, sure, but given that we often discuss potentially life and death scenarios and hypotheticals, there's sometimes a tendency towards hyperbole that borders on irrational.

Again, the crux of the issue is training and tactics. For obvious reasons, I and many others won't go into too much detail on those things on open forums, which then leaves the bulk of the discussion being technical comparisons at best, a lot of "uh huh!" and "nuh uh!" discussions and purse swinging at worst.

Something to consider, though, is that noise and light discipline doesn't necessarily have to mean the absolute absence of these things, for starters, in a lot of ways, it's fundamentally impossible--I'm sorry, but an infantry squad moving through the brush at night is never going to be 100% noiseless, but a well disciplined and trained unit is a lot quieter than one that is not.

Even while practicing noise and light discipline without NODs, I had an "L"-shaped flashlight and a damn whistle strapped to me, not to mention a decidedly "not quiet" weapon--there's a time and a place for these things, noise and light discipline is about knowing where and when those are. The issue with active IR emissions is that many have been lulled into forgetting these long-honed lessons and lost that discipline in the erroneous and arrogant assumption of absolute technological superiority. Worked super well for us in Vietnam... We've assumed that others don't have the technology, so we've gotten sloppy, and have learned, sometimes through hard lessons and failure, that this is increasingly not the case, and probably never was the case in the first place. But it also doesn't mean that we can never ever ever use them.

This goes back to learning to do things in the dark without the technology in the first place--because it's easier to learn those lessons and get that discipline first, then integrate the technology, than to have all the technology and then try to learn how and when and where to use it and not use it.

I spent a lot of early years in Francis Marion National Forest, I bet the ol' Swamp Fox and his boys could still make a mess of a bunch of folks dicking around with PVS-14s but with no idea what they were doing with just what they had back in the day--imagine if you gave them and taught 'em how to use modern toys...

~Augee