The ANVIS system isn’t necessarily designed to be the most solid system—without looking at your actual unit, you may simply have a worn out axle or monocular pod, somewhat hard to tell. A rebuild might fix it, it might not.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the ANVIS is one of my favorite goggles, however, I would say that most of the “up-armor” and “upgrades” out there aren’t really worth the squeeze, IMHO. Even the most popular “up-armor” option is a full rebuild that does nothing more than epoxy some metal to the PAS (Pivot and Adjustment Shelf), but doesn’t address the relatively delicate monocular pod attachment interfaces and the very finely threaded and thin adjustment axle—in essence, you’re addressing one weak point, but leaving all the others, and increasing the chances of damaging those—the only real “upgrade” that might be worth it to some is the “old school” method of simply filling the whole PAS with epoxy, but you will lose both tilt and IPD adjustment in the process to gain a more solid PAS bridge.

If you really want to upgrade, my recommendation would be to bite the bullet and upgrade the whole housing to something like the RNVG.

~Augee

@SGT-Fish

Yes, that's kind of exactly my point with the up-armor system--the PAS is definitely a weak point in the design (we say that, but they weren’t designed for ground combat use, though even aviators break them, which may or may not be what you're talking about anyways based on some of your posts ), but up-armoring the PAS ONLY without doing anything to reinforce anything else is kind of just transferring the problem:

It's like if you break a bone, the bone will often heal (if it heals properly) stronger where it broke than it was originally--but this then puts you at a greater risk of breaks on either side of the old one, where the bone is now comparatively weaker, I have a metal plate and several screws in my wrist that will likely survive the apocalypse, but that means that if I sustain another injury on that side, I've just made myself more susceptible to a forearm break. Up-armoring the PAS is much the same thing--it may save your PAS, but IMHO, any damage that was going to break the PAS will just end up breaking something else at another weak point instead--I can't think of many failure modes where the PAS would break, but everything else would survive... which means that if the PAS is reinforced, the same force will just make it break somewhere else instead of at the PAS.

The other option is to simply reinforce everything... which is how the F5050 and Sentinel were invented.

Again, I would agree with the Army on this one (whoa... are we in bizarro-land? ) rebuilding an ANVIS housing assembly is rarely worth the time and effort versus simply transplanting to a new housing, whether a new ANVIS housing, or a new housing design in completely.

The RNVG is not currently made in an ANVIS objective compatible version, though the MOD-3B and DTNVG are both available, albeit special order for us. The AVS Sentinel is technically still "available" in a general sense... but I would not hold my breath on getting a new one in the near future.

That being said, generally speaking, when upgrading from ANVIS to a ground goggle, I generally recommend switching the PVS-14 objectives at the same time, while ANVIS glass is very, very nice, the PVS-14 objective is much simpler and much more rugged, and once the lenses start getting dirty (whether you're using LIFs, sacrificial lenses, or nothing, glass on the ground gets dirty in ways that they don't in aircraft), it's somewhat more moot.

Meanwhile, almost all ANVIS glass, unless it's 5050 glass will have various coatings that cut out certain wavelengths of light, which is nice if you need it, but can cause its own whole set of issues that you need to be aware of.

~Augee

A couple months ago we requested some ANVIS format RNVG housings from AB. Those housings should be ready in a month or so for around the same price as the rest of the RNVG housings.

Correct, with dovetail, CR123 battery and aux port.

AB Night Vision told us it was another month or so, they are machining the housings now. There pretty backed up with work.

Yessir they arrived today.

Yes I'll answer for us...Lol

Ours will be here today or Monday.

They discontinued this due to very low volume,  but I think it's still a special order when their time allows which is not a lot of. AB folks are very busy folks.