French defense manufacturer Thales has unveiled a new weapon sight that reportedly expands a soldier’s field of view and enables improved identification of adversaries.
Called the XTRAIM, the cutting-edge tech can operate day and night and has a “decamouflage” feature only achieved before by utilizing multiple military technologies.
Decamouflage is a term given to an image-scaling attack detection framework consisting of three independent detection methods: rescaling, filtering, and steganalysis.
According to Thales, the XTRAIM sight provides soldiers with high-precision night-firing capability and is compatible with all shoulder-fired assault rifles and light machine guns.
The company asserts that the new technology provides a key advantage to soldiers during combat missions due to design and features that match operational requirements.
Additional Capabilities
Weighing less than 530 grams (1.1 pounds), the XTRAIM weapon sight reduces soldiers’ equipment burden, giving them improved agility, endurance, and enemy identification capabilities.
The ergonomic design of the new device allows users to shoot with both eyes open, allowing them to be fully aware of their surroundings while engaging targets.
The technology also combines a reflex red-dot sight with thermal imaging technology to pick out targets from the background during daylight operations.
The XTRAIM is compatible with all types of night vision goggles, making it suitable for night operations. When configured, the infrared images from the weapon sight are placed over images from the goggle’s light-intensification tubes to enhance its target identification capability in low-light conditions.
“The outstanding optical, electronic and mechanical expertise of the teams from Saint-Héand … has made it possible to design and develop a solution with our customers, for our customers, that offers the best operational capabilities available today,” Thales official Christophe Salomon said in a press release. “XTRAIM is nothing short of a revolution for the armed forces.”
