Need help for research! (Stealth Illumination Flashlight)

I couldn't find a more appropriate thread than this one so I figured I'd give it a shot...

About a year ago I saw a documentary on the discovery channel or something like it...the documentary was about non-lethal weapons being developed but the thing that I was interested in the most was (for lack of knowing the name) a High-power Flashlight that the "beam" or area of illumination could only be seen by the person using the "flashlight"...the thing that made it interesting was that the user of the "flashlight" could use a special pair of goggles or glasses that would define the beam...but it wasn't by using photosynthesis or thermal imaging or any of the "common" image intensifiers that are being used by the military.
Also, the "beam" illuminated the intended area in a White Light...just like a traditional flashlight...however the person being illuminated would not know that they were being "illuminated".

It really was fascinating and I'd love to know more about it, but I've been VERY unsuccessful in finding anything about this technology online or elsewhere!

Anybody got any bells ringing in their ears and can point me in the right direction?!?
Thanks, BFD

*Fixed title so members know what this thread is about*

[edit on 15-11-2005 by dbates]

i can't believe its not already in world wide use, or is it lol?

That is pretty interesting and I wish I could see the show you saw. I wonder if this technology is something like that starlite fireproofing material that was mentioned to the public and then pulled and made secret? Maybe they never intended for it to be on TV and that was the first and only time it will ever be shown for a long time?

Could the program have been talking about IR? Infra Red illumination is invisible to the naked eye, but a NVD makes it quite apparent. A pair of NVGs fits neatly into the "special pair of goggles or glasses " section, but they could be classed as a common piece of military hardware, just a normal image intensifier.
Could you be referencing the terahertz wavelength?

You know, the thing that I'm getting stuck on when I'm thinking back to that program is this: I don't remember goggles or glasses being mentioned as being necessary to use this technology! But I don't know how that would be possible!

I clearly remember that in the demonstration the user of the "flashlight" and another person who was going to be the "hunted" were in a pitch-black warehouse or large room...as the "hunted" walked through the room as quietly as possible the TV cameras followed his movements with night-vision technology...then when the "flashlight" was going to be used the cameras switched to regular filming, making the scene pitch black until the "flashlight" was turned on...and apparently, to the naked eye, from what I remember, the "hunted" was illuminated as if by a bright WHITE spotlight...But the "hunted" kept walking around as quietly as possible and had no idea that he was clearly illuminated from all the way across the room!

I still can't wrap my head around it and I wish to God that I'd had a DVR back when this show was on, but alas, I'm screwed for want!

I do remember that the "flashlight" unit was NOT SMALL, as I remember; it was probably the size of large coffee thermos, or maybe a small-ish sized rocket launcher...and the "bulb" area of the unit was about the size of a dinner plate.

I'm starting to think that you are right Warpboost, maybe that technology was not supposed to be aired in the first place?

if you know the chanel - ask them for a summary of the programs . or check thier web site

as an example , the UK "horizon" prog has a searchable index of past shows

horizon_homepage

can you remember the presenter - you could google his credited work etc etc


it seems to me like its some variation on IR or " black light " and the first thing that springs to mind is WHY suppress it ?

if the" evil guberbint " wanted to watch me with KNOWN tech , ie - IR , NVG thermal;s etc - i would not know - so how is the supposed new tech going to aid them ????????????

all this sounds pretty interesting. I sure sounds like something that someone is trying to keep under wraps, and that airing was a mistake. If you could only remember the program . . . or thought to record it!

QUOUTE:" I sure sounds like something that someone is trying to keep under wraps, and that airing was a mistake"

WHAT ????????? the mind boggles

have you any idea how a teevee documentary is made ? they are not commisioned , planned , fimed , edited and screened " by mistate "

I was lucky enough to be issued a Phantom Warrior flashlight during a recent deployment, it is I believe the only light approved by the Army to be operated in the presence of NVGs. The white light signature is VERY LOW even on the brighhtest setting, from more than a short distance away, thus keeping friendly, nearby NVG users from being blinded as well as lowering the chances of the enemy seeing the beam. Reverse the batteries and it is an IR flashlight.

There is indeed also another light out there, I don't believe it is on the civilian market yet and frankly don't know if it was a DoD or DoJ program, but it is intended to produce a blinding flash of light. Problems obviously being size (capacitors needed), battery life, and shock-proofing. It is a "normal" flashlight for all intents and purposes, with the option of a disorienting flash mode. It is not however designed to be interoperable with NVGs nor especially "stealthy".

rainmaker, the second flashlight you described that has the blinding strobe option sounds like it could be utilized like a reusable flash bang without the bang Even a camera flash can be pretty diorienting in the right situation and that thing is probably brighter and flashed repeatedly instead of just once.

[edit on 17-11-2005 by warpboost]

Thanks warpboost. Maybe later tonight I will try doing some searching to find info on that online...I came across it while researching the Phamtom Warrior so I will throw around some search terms..."tactical light," "military flashlight," "special purpose light" are some search terms I probably used if anyone wants to try some Google searches...

If you are looking to build something like this yourself it would be very easy. You can buy LEDs that are ultra-violet, not infrared, that is above the visible spectrum instead of below. You can also purchase UV bulbs, UV lights etc that have a floodlight effect, but only in the non-visible spectrum. The only trick is that the observer must have a way of "seeing" in the UV spectrum. If you look, almost all CCD and CMOS video sensors are sensitive to the UV spectrum, thus allowing you to "see" what you have illuminated with a very cheap and portable video camera. I imagine you could build some sort of custom unit, or just duct-tape the two things together.
By the way, UV spotlights with surveillance cams are a GREAT way to observe a very dark area without letting people know it is lit up. Just google UV camera or UV spotlight and I'm sure you will find these products.

Informatu, it's very probable that that is what I saw on the program, great info...I wonder if there are any private sector companies that are developing this tech?
At least now that I've got plenty of info to search with it'll be easier to track it all down!

Originally posted by informatu
If you are looking to build something like this yourself it would be very easy. You can buy LEDs that are ultra-violet, not infrared, that is above the visible spectrum instead of below.

I will have to try that, I put this on my TODO list.

In the past I experimented with an old black & white Connectix QuickCam, I opened the camera and removed the IR filter. Then all it took was to turn on the tiny IR led of a TV remote control to illuminate the entire room in total darkness. Amazing results! Total cost $15. Granted the camera I used was crap, if the person moved to quick the image became blurry and I couldn't recognise his face, but with a more expensive CCTV camera you would get better results.

Nothing beat thermal imaging so far, at least not that I know of. It's passive night vision, so you don't need any IR or UV source of illumination. But very expensive stuff, expect to pay around $7000 for a decent quality camera.

whoops, sorry, my bad, the only UV LEDs available at the moment are in the visible spectrum. I am pretty sure I was thinking of infrared. I looked at the sensitivity of the CCD cameras again and it is in the 700nm wavelength region, which is IR not UV. Sorry if I caused undue excitement.
Still, those UV crimescene flashlights look pretty awesome.

The led light and camera idea reminds me of this homemade nightvision scope I saw a while back

www.hackaday.com...




And here is a homemade led light and camera setup like informatu was talking about

www.gizmology.net...




[edit on 18-11-2005 by warpboost]

>>
You know, the thing that I'm getting stuck on when I'm thinking back to that program is this: I don't remember goggles or glasses being mentioned as being necessary to use this technology!
>>

Early Russian ('Gen 1.5' for a guess) NVDs use IR diodes around the upper rim of the lens covers and are are actually superior for both range and shadowzone penetration in closed rooms etc. Furthermore, they can be tuned to respond quicker to changes in ambient intensities so that /anything/ outside a nominally narrow spectral range is blanked out before hitting the MCP, let alone eye.

>>
But I don't know how that would be possible!
>>

Actually, most humans can see further into the IR and UV spectrums than is commonly known. Turn off a light bulb and see the 'glow'. That is near-IR.

Turn off a computer monitor and look /from the side/ of the screen (in a darkened room) that is UV.

With direct retinal projecton (holographic displays which use the eye lens as a direct combiner) you could probably enhance a lot of this.

>>
I clearly remember that in the demonstration the user of the "flashlight" and another person who was going to be the "hunted" were in a pitch-black warehouse or large room.
>>

Careful. With little or no preparation, I can make a room so dark that there is not enough ambient photon activity to function at a physical level. At least in the near-IR (.76 to 1.3u) range.

>>
..as the "hunted" walked through the room as quietly as possible the TV cameras followed his movements with night-vision technology...then when the "flashlight" was going to be used the cameras switched to regular filming, making the scene pitch black until the "flashlight" was turned on...and apparently, to the naked eye, from what I remember, the "hunted" was illuminated as if by a bright WHITE spotlight...
>>

Suspicious. How did the hunter find him? Was the 'glaring white light' effect on a GREEN SCREEN (or B&W) presentation of a television monitor?
To a lowlight capable system, a man lighting a cigarette half a block away looks like he's setting off a fireworks display.

>>
But the "hunted" kept walking around as quietly as possible and had no idea that he was clearly illuminated from all the way across the room!
>>

Not possible.

You can alter the phase of a light to allow anyone not immediately in it's path very little chance of seeing it's refractive spray outside the illumination beamswath. But to do so to a human (with visible light) would require precision awarness of everything from stereoscopy effects (most humans don't have perfect depth perception and the eyes will vary, slighty, for left:right and high:low orbital alignment based on dominance and muscle development as well as assymetry at the genetic level) to anaprop conditions in the local atmosphere. You would literally have to realtime match the phase and hz rate of the eye scan (motor psychology) at the disparate left-right rates for which the visual system updates each part of the human visual cognition centers.

And that rate varies just enough between people to be impossible, even if you could hold retina-center within the scotomal arc using a VERY fine laser, the mapping from person to person would be too highly vagaried to allow for full covertness. They might only see it as a glow like the sun over the horizon, but they would see it. And as soon as you expand the spot coverage enough to illuminate (again visible spectrum) ANY other part of the body, the glint and scintillant Mie scatter would become just impossible to predict, let alone match.

>>
I still can't wrap my head around it and I wish to God that I'd had a DVR back when this show was on, but alas, I'm screwed for want!
>>

There is a laser dazzler that is in open field test use in select law enforcement agencies. It looks like it runs on about 10 D-cells and is indeed like a long flashflight.

The problem is that the victim is indeed VERY MUCH aware of the unit's presence and gets an effect something like a prismatic spray (close your eyes press on your eyeball, kaleidoscopic psychedilism) as the laser radiation penetrate and focus' on the retinal back wall no with an intensity and at a refractive index that can cause unwanted and disorienting 'flash' photorensis (duuuh, IIRR) of the retina in areas that don't normally (time synch) feed the optic nerve that way.

Unfortunately, there are a whole host of 'unknowns' with this system including shortterm effects like night blindness and iris based paralytics which cause image overlaps and 'halos' around various light-dark differentiated objects.

All the way up to corneal ulcers and rupturing of the Descemets (again, from a long-ago bio class) membrane which is more or less the burst and collapsing of the eye.

Lasers are NOT something to be messed with and if the episode you are talking about is the one I remember, dealing with supposedly less-than-lethal weapons technology, you need only contemplate the notion of 20-30 years of blindness after knowing sight or worse, psychovisual seizuer problems akin to epilepsy as a 'restrained use of force' alternative to 10 seconds worth of mortal bullets by which (at least) a government might be more apt to be quickly labelled rogue.

Because that is what the programs "I know, shine the dazzle right in the camera at a 3ft distance away from the flashlight!" use of the dazzler would have been likely to torture-and-maim do.

>>
I'm starting to think that you are right Warpboost, maybe that technology was not supposed to be aired in the first place?
>>

We live in a diametrian world which at once worships the ultmate blood sport of lethal violence as an organized and exclusive social activitiy and proscribes it as a social-psychologic safety valve 'for the rest of us' who share the 2 million year legacy of hunter-gathering genetics.

But not political loyalty or submission to the few allowed to release their inner predator.

Somewhere beneath the laboring brow of mindless mass conscience beats a constant of awareness that /maybe/ this is not a good. Not a 'fair' thing.

That it perhaps is not the act of killing but it's _reasoned justification_ which is being abortively misused in the name of good as simply limited empowerment to do violence.

And thus (to cover up their own hypocrisy of needless sport-warfare while keeping us firmly guilt ridden 'in abstentia') the Powers That Be run a continuing slideshow by which, divorcing motive from consequence, blood from justification, they can make their own actions seem acceptable, even commendable 'because nothing really bad ever happened to the majority'.

Unfortunately, by following this line of simpleton ill-logic (violence is wrong for all of us, therefore the government who /conjointly represents us/ must be the only ones allowed to engage in it), the reality becomes that the traditional method of 'inspiring ones fellow morons' with vituperous discourse can all too readily be interpreted or even (further incited to a true mob psychology.

At which point, with these weapons in hand, no amount of apriori bad act complaint justification by the beaten and humiliated 'but still breathing' victim can overwhelm a secondary instinctive response which is to dismiss he weak as being inherently wrong.

"After all, he knew what was coming..."

THIS in turn is deadly. Not to the body but the mind of a social (shared, experimental) cultural memory awareness. Because a rancher doesn't get his herd of cattle to start wandering up to the abatoir kill chute by pulling out a gun and blasting one right between the eyes.

He does it by making the /inevitable/ (acquiesce or be hurt) seem like a matter of gentle embarrassment at having to be coerced at all.

We are not cattle. But the moment we endorse 'hunting' a human being, whether with a covert illumination or by 'driving' force of a dazzler/tazer/paint-ball mace. We deprave and degrade ourselves one more step towards a schismatic severing of the human whole which is an acknowledgement of MOTIVES as much as actions in standing by them.

'Once upon a time', someone once said...

"No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many."

The reality is that two will no longer (and have rarely ever) stood against the many and won the day. So we MUST CARE WHY, as a social organism, if only by putting more than embarrassment on the line when it comes to time for more than casual motivation or commitment to be all that is required for violence to BE acceptable.

LTL's, because of their mass psychosis effects on morale and motivational shifts make push that line a long ways right of fuzzy.


KPl.