The COTI: Night Vision and Thermal Fusion

Its interesting to me when technology tops out in terms of development in one sense and changes direction or innovates through integration of an emerging technology. It happens with a lot of things and in most industries, and certainly in contemporary weapons development.

Its definitely the case with night vision - we've advanced about as far as we're gonna go in terms of light intensification and image definition. And thus, an evolving technology enters and begins changing things in a radically new way. That'd be integrating thermal, and the unit is known as an COTI (Clip On Thermal Imager). As the name would suggest, COTIs simply clip on to the end of the night vision housing and superimpose the thermal overlay into the intensifier tube, giving a thermal overlay to everything you see in real time. 

Chances are high you've probably seen some of the promo-footage of 'next generation' night vision devices that have a crazy, almost Tron-inspired overlay created by outlines or highlights of heat signatures superimposed on the night vision background. This was most famously depicted in the movie Kandahar (2023). Its definitely a wild ride for the wearer but a very useful one. Picking up on targets of interest during movement is obviously a step up from night vision alone and while the concept itself is not new - we've been doing this in certain circles for well over a decade now - its only now starting to trickle into civilian circles as both a concept and the equipment. 

It wasn't that long ago that many of our customers sought to bridge a thermal unit to a PVS-14. Those units were either the RH25, FLIR Breach, StingIR or the Armasight Sidekick, each representing lightweight options that fit perfectly alongside the PVS-14. My personal reservation with those aside from the RH25 was the lag involved and in the case of the FLIR, a nearly obsolete thermal imager. The PVS-14 is analog, the thermal is digital. And it moves ever so slightly slower because of that, slow enough to notice. And that lag may not bother you. But it did me, in addition to my brain just not being able to put two distinct pictures together from two different eyes. Blame it on the IEDs and youth spent breaking quarter horses. 

Clearly I wasn't the only one, though, and the development of a fusion unit (which the COTI is one) was always the clear path forward. And while there have certainly been others, the COTI is still the lightest and most ergonomic way to achieve a thermal and night vision fusion. If you're after thermal fusion as an upgrade to your night vision package, the COTI is the way to go.