FLiRS

The FLIR team, including both Raytheon and the FRCSE, also demonstrates highly evolved thought beyond the traditional maintenance partnership roles.

Back in October of 2006, we wrote up our experiences flying enhanced vision via a foward-looking infrared camera ("Flying the FLIR").

They are dark patches when viewed through forward looking infrared (FLIR) sensors in white hot mode, and white patches when seen through FLIR black hot mode.

Our heads were buried in the cockpit trying to sweeten the FLIR image, so we would have good video footage to show.

The F-22 would also be a good platform for a dual-use targeting/reconnaissance FLIR, as discussed below, since neither ability is funded yet and both are needed.

Its A-6 (attack) and M-6 (command and control) helicopters were designed to operate exclusively at night, being outfitted with forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and night vision goggles.

Hence the significance of night-vision devices, such as flirs, for self-defense against pirates.

In passive systems, such as FLIRs or mm-wave radiometers, radiation from the runway and its surroundings, including reflected sky radiation, traverses a section of the atmosphere on its way to the sensor and in the process experiences a reduction in its intensity.

That's the rub for "low-cost" FLIRs. It's a hard to see the value of one of these systems unless you regularly fly with it into low IFR or black-hole airports at night--or have had an IMC or night emergency.

That same day, said Harrill, "they download those FLIRs, take them off the airplanes and give them to another squadron."