"All Weather" TGP can't see through clouds
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Afaik IRL they have no problem looking through clouds, but as everyone knows in 4.33 the TGP can’t penetrate any cloud at all.
Is there any intention of allowing them to see thermals through all types of weather?
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Your RL information is wrong. Clouds absorb and scatter radiation more or less depending on the used wavelength. There maybe though IR viewers that use specific wavelengths (e.g. not at 6.5um), which are less resonant to any water absorption.
But in general, TGP using IR detection cannot see through clouds….water has a very strong absorption.BMS is also doing a good job here.
EDIT: Water absorption is so important that there is a reason why even airborne radars operate at the wavelength they operate.
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Just to make myself clear. I don’t know your background and I would feel bad if you misunderstood something.
Whether a Tgp will be able to detect through clouds depends mainly on 3 parameters: the intensity of the radiation source, the sensitivity of your IR detector and the amount of water molecules (as well as other particles) in between.
The interplay of these three parameters will define if you can see or not through a cloud. Of course, if you have a thin cirrus layer and tbelow it there is burning source, then your Tgp will naturally see through clouds.
Hope it clearer….enjoy BMS. -
It’s not uncommon for near-IR to be absorbed enough that the IR image has significantly less range than the visual spectrum even without visible moisture. In the case of visible moisture IR is usually heavily attenuated. Droplet size-wavelength relative size matters a good deal. The longer wavelength equipment on FLIR is a bit better at penetrating visible moisture. The longer the wavelength the more weather penetration capability there is but the temperatures you’re interested in dictate what part of the spectrum you want. Targeting stuff is shorter and navigation stuff is longer.
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I dont have a link handy right now but I’m pretty sure there are some unclassified docs about RL IR shortcomings - maybe some stuff in docs provided in the install too, need to check.
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Have a vid testing the rl lantirn tgp pod and you cannot see behind clouds.
You would need a thermal FLIR to achieve this.
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…to my knowledge there is no IR device that can see “though” clouds…anywhere. They can see clouds, but not see though them. For reasons of the pure physics of the tech.
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I suspect you saw this video and at 1min14s they mention something similar to what you are asking … but …ahem …well you guys know.
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…chortle…
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…to my knowledge there is no IR device that can see “though” clouds…anywhere. They can see clouds, but not see though them. For reasons of the pure physics of the tech.
Depends on the wavelength. Theres IRST stuff in development that can detect stuff through clouds. IIRC (and thus is far from my field of expertise) longer wavelength IR is less affected by clouds? Whether longer or shorter, the point is the tech exists - although from memory it has other shortcomings.
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Longer wavelength is higher power…but as someone whom has spent a couple decades working with these systems, well, all I have to say is “goodluckwiddat”.
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Here we go again. Power and wavelength do not have anything to do with each other. If you meant photon energy, then it is the contrary: longer wavelengths, photons with less energy than shorter wavelengths.
Ok, I am not getting in this kind of posts anymore….I have promised to myself.
Have a nice day, Stevie. -
There is a good source on all this :
https://www.ida.org/~/media/corporate/files/publications/ida_documents/sed/ida-document-d-4642.pdfSlides “Atmospheric effects” and “Contrast and Clutter”.
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Here we go again. Power and wavelength do not have anything to do with each other. If you meant photon energy, then it is the contrary: longer wavelengths, photons with less energy than shorter wavelengths.
Ok, I am not getting in this kind of posts anymore….I have promised to myself.
Have a nice day, Stevie.…actually, power and wavelength have nothing to do with IR sensors since they are passive receivers and their sensitivity is strictly proportional to aperture size…so yeah, my bad; mea culpa. But I still stand by my “goodluckwiddat” on seeing through clouds with one.
