military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) (02/05/91)
From: att!ihlpm!rats The FOG-M program has been CANCELLED after $400 million (U.S.) was expended on it. Hughes claimed they couldn't solve the problems? What problems? I thought they had working models, and I know I saw recently where AT&T was given a contract for the fiberoptic cable. An industry source claimed that wanted to thing to be useful against heliborne threats, and that the military wanted a 20-mile range. If so, I can see why the thing failed. It was supposed to have been a bare-bones television guided missile against armored vehicles. Well for Christ sakes, you couldn't even see a tank over the horizon, let alone 20-miles! Seems as though the U.S. Army conspired to kill it... ---------- Yesterday's news (2-3-91) showed footage of captured night vision gear that the U.S. military was reusing against their former owners. They were Old Delft night vision binoculars that utilised a single CAT lens feeding the image intensifier tubes which in turn fed a prism that split the image for binocular viewing with individual eyepieces. The media and some U.S. military claimed to have been surprised by this capability? Huh? Stuff has been around on the open market for 2 decades.