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Germany's Tornado reconnaissance jets 'can't fly at night': report
Could be that their night vision goggles are lacking minus blue filters in their optics.. or that the wavelength of the filters does not match the wavelength of the cockpit lighting...

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24 years 2 months

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NVGs weren't big in aviation until the 1980s. It isn't surprising that 1970s cockpit displays on a Tornado cannot be dimmed enough to be compatible with NVGs.

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12 years 3 months

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The LCD upgrade is recent. We can only wonder how this has passed testing.

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Could be that their night vision goggles are lacking minus blue filters in their optics.. or that the wavelength of the filters does not match the wavelength of the cockpit lighting...

Could it be that they havent planned and resourced and trained very well? If you think that your frontline aircraft are going to be used in anything other than exercises, then you equip them for that eventuality surely?

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NVGs weren't big in aviation until the 1980s. It isn't surprising that 1970s cockpit displays on a Tornado cannot be dimmed enough to be compatible with NVGs.

Really? It wasn't a problem for the RAF 25 years ago, so why should it be a problem for the Luftwaffe now?

And Luftwaffe (& other) Tornados don't have 1970s displays nowadays. All updated to LCD displays, like the Italians.

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Really? It wasn't a problem for the RAF 25 years ago, so why should it be a problem for the Luftwaffe now?

And Luftwaffe (& other) Tornados don't have 1970s displays nowadays. All updated to LCD displays, like the Italians.

So it seems putting those two sentences together that the new displays are actually worse in regards to NVG use than the old displays from the seventies.

So whoever did the upgrade simply ignored the need for there use in combination with NVG. Makes sense modern cockpits are full of flat panel displays. Those displays are much larger light sources than the older displays. If you ignored the need to use NVG when designing them then it is not surprising that the new displays render NVG unusable.

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If so, someone got the specifications for the upgrade spectacularly wrong, & nobody picked it up in testing.

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NVG compatibility apparently was not an ASSTA 3 requirement so it should come as no surprise the jet can't do what it wasn't asked to do.
ASSTA 3.1 will add NVG compatibility afaik.

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NVG compatibility apparently was not an ASSTA 3 requirement so it should come as no surprise the jet can't do what it wasn't asked to do.
ASSTA 3.1 will add NVG compatibility afaik.

So, they seriously send airplane doing some coalition work unable to operate among their coalition peers ?

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Makes you wonder what the specifications for the Tornado replacement will be!

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18 years 9 months

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NVG compatibility apparently was not an ASSTA 3 requirement so it should come as no surprise the jet can't do what it wasn't asked to do.
ASSTA 3.1 will add NVG compatibility afaik.

I've seen it reported elsewhere that it's not the screens, but LEDs which emit too much IR. The problem's been known about for a while & there's a requirement to replace them, but it's not been co-ordinated with installation of ASSTA 3, so it went ahead with the old LEDs - & there's a temporary fix with some kind of kit (filters to go over the LED lights?), but again, an administrative ****-up re. provision of it.

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Not necessarily displays, even one or two really bright diodes will force the ABC (Automatic Brightness Control) of your tubes to adjust the gain accordingly causing an ongoing loss of visual acuity for the scene outside the cockpit. NV compatible lighting is not only about reduced brightness, it's primarily about operating wavelength which is then largely filtered out by minus-blue filters.

Here is what happens if you don't adjust your lighting correctly.. The cockpit lighting modified to Class-B (emission up to 665 nm) as viewed through Class-A objective lens of AN/AVS-9 NVGs and through the correct Class-B objective lens.. Class-B objective lens filters out all light below 665 nm, hence no unfiltered light entering the cathode. However, use of ANVIS-9 with Class-A objectives (625nm limit) allows unfiltered red lighting to enter your tubes..

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