Color night vision goggles capable of providing anti-jamming protection against pulsed and continuous wave jamming lasers

Abstract

Color night vision goggles (NVG), e.g., binocular-style or monocular-style NVG, which include at least one channel. Each channel includes an objective lens for receiving input radiant energy from a low-luminance scene within the field-of-view of the NVG, an input tunable electro-optical filter positioned in front of the objective lens, an image intensifier device for amplifying input radiant energy transmitted by the input electro-optical filter and the objective lens, and for generating output radiant energy which constitutes an amplified image of the low-luminance scene, an eyepiece lens, an output tunable electro-optical filter disposed between the image intensifier device and the eyepiece lens, and a control circuit for generating a control signal having a prescribed frequency. The input and output electro-optical filters sequentially and synchronously transmit successive ones of a plurality of different spectral bands (e.g., the blue, green, and red color bands) of the input and output radiant energy, respectively, in response to the control signal, during each successive cycle of the control signal, whereby a viewer can perceive a full-color image of the low-luminance scene when looking through the eyepiece lens. The prescribed frequency of the control signal is preferably sufficiently high to ensure that the full-color image is flicker-free. The color NVG are preferably further provided with a gated power supply for supplying current to the image intensifier device, a detector for detecting laser light that may enter the field-of-view of the NVG and for producing a train of electrical output pulses in response to detection of laser light, even when the detected laser light is generated by a continuous wave laser, and a pulse-following circuit responsive to the train of electrical output pulses produced by the detector for producing a corresponding train of gating pulses. The gated power supply is responsive to the gating pulses for selectively interrupting the current supplied by the gated power supply in synchronism with the detected laser pulses, to thereby protect the color NVG from all possible jamming laser threats.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.