In 2024, the market for night vision and specifically night vision optics, is full of options and alternative choices, but how do you know you're buying the "right" setup?
Optics for night vision specifically refers to the eyepiece and objective lenses used in the assembly of complete night vision systems. Choice of optics are important as they directly receive and modulate the light both entering and exiting the intensifier. Using commercial grade or replica optics will degrade overall performance and the user experience and can mean the difference between seeing vs not seeing an object of interest.
Night Vision Optics can be broken down into two main types in 2024:
- US Milspec
- Commercial Spec & Replica
We'll break down each of the most popular options in each category but because of the rapid advancement and rate at which reproductions are being created, this may not be exhaustive.
US Milspec
For the sake of comparison, only 40-degree standard optics are considered, although RPO 2.0, 3.0, and Photonis Defense Boomslang 50° Wide FOV optics are all manufactured to US Milspec standards. Currently there are only two combinations of 40° night vision optics that qualify as US Milspec - Noctis Technologies (formerly known as Carson) with lenses OEM'd by Fujinon; and Salvo Engineering/Qioptiq.
Noctis lenses are legendary and considered to be the Gold Standard of lenses in the areas of rectilinear distortion, flare suppression, light transmission, eyebox, and adjustability. They can be identified by a slightly glossy objective lens with a half-knurled endbell; and a rich purple/gold anti-glare coating on the eyepiece. Some older iterations of the Fujinon eyepiece feature a matte diopter housing (these are actually OEM'd by Qioptiq/Excelitas) but current production is semi-gloss. Genuine Noctis optics will feature the CAGE code 1XEP3 laser-etched on the lens cell - this is the CAGE code for Carson Industries.
Another alternative that was introduced in 2023 was the Salvo Technologies / Qioptiq objective combination. These lenses surpass US Milspec standards as measured on the Trioptics ImageMaster HR 2 and can be identified with a glossy diopter housing and a slightly pale yellow eyepiece lens cell; and the double-knurled endbell with a teal lens coating on the objective.
These will look similar to a commercial grade offering made by AAPO and Optronics, but can be easily differentiated via the teal coating on the Qioptiq, and large wide notches in the lens cell retaining ring (compared to the AAPO's double retaining ring with much thinner notches on the lens cell retaining ring).
Qioptiq objectives exceed US Milspec standards and the MTF charts (as measured on the Trioptics ImageMaster HR 2) are shown below (black line denotes US Milspec; the higher the reading the better the ability to resolve contrast between line pairs).
MTF Raw Data here:
Commercial Spec
Commercial-spec offerings typically are offered as a low-cost alternative to Milspec options. Targeted mostly for "casual users", these lenses are typically only marginally cheaper than their Milspec counterparts, but will typically have either lower test scores compared to Milspec or completely lack any test data or have a complete lack of track record in the market.
In 2024, these options include, but are not limited to:
- RPO Commercial
- AAPO
- Optronics / Apache / AGM
- Argus Lightweight
- Alexi
- CK Optics
- YMON
- Rising Infrared Optics
- Any lenses made in China and are sold on aliexpress, taobao, made-in-china, etc.
It should also be noted that most of the options above cannot be collimated in a binocular system, making them entirely unsuitable for use besides in a monocular setup. If you are in doubt about whether your lenses are collimatable and milspec, you should ask your night vision dealer or assembler to provide an image of the actual lenses in question, through a collimation bridge such as on a Hoffman ANV-126A.