Hmm, helos are more involved in combat?

[lowflier03]

The pointer on the FLIR is not eye safe, though there is an eye safe laser but it provides range only. Don't be so sad about the HUD. Its still the crappy Navy NVD HUD. You would think we could have at least upgraded to the Army slim HUD, or actually spent some money to get a good one.
You can do a rough Q point with the MGRS, FLIR slew, but there is no easy way to assign an altitude to that point, so unless you are at sea level, its not very good.
The Tactical overlay will display an approximate FLIR footprint but the way its done is again pretty rough. All of this only ties in well if they apply DTED data with the overlay so the system can make use of the altitude data. Unfortunately with our track record on system software, that's probably not gonna happen.

 

[Gatordev]

The pointer on the FLIR is not eye safe, though there is an eye safe laser but it provides range only. Don't be so sad about the HUD. Its still the crappy Navy NVD HUD. You would think we could have at least upgraded to the Army slim HUD, or actually spent some money to get a good one.
You can do a rough Q point with the MGRS, FLIR slew, but there is no easy way to assign an altitude to that point, so unless you are at sea level, its not very good.
The Tactical overlay will display an approximate FLIR footprint but the way its done is again pretty rough. All of this only ties in well if they apply DTED data with the overlay so the system can make use of the altitude data. Unfortunately with our track record on system software, that's probably not gonna happen.

Good point. I wasn't thinking 3 dimensionally on the cue point. My only (very brief) exposure with pointers has been with a PEQ-3 or IZLID, neither of which is eye safe (technically). Do they make eye-safe pointers? Seems like it would run out of energy fairly quickly, although I guess if it's concentrated enough...

I haven't seen the Army's HUD. Is the monocular smaller and less bulky?

 

[HueyCobra8151]

Laser Pointer is good, but I think what you really want is LRP and Laser Spot Tracker (LST), especially if you are employing Hellfire (and APKWS?)

 

[RobLyman]

We have a new HUD, about 1/4 the size with a thinner cable.

I am sure we will never get a designator laser. Somethng about red crosses painted on our aircraft tells me a laser designator will never find ts way on our aircraft.