Electronics overcame darkness

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 6

Electronics overcame darkness

NZPA-Reuter Washington Night is like day in the world of electronic warfare and that is how United States military helicopters caught an Iranian Navy boat laying mines in the Gulf, Reagan Administration officials said yesterday. “The crew of those choppers can look through the FLIR (For-ward-Looking Infra-Red) device at night and see a fuzzy green TV-type picture that turns night into day,” one of the officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.

Two helicopters from the United States frigate Jarrett attacked what the United States identified as an Iranian Navy landing craft on Monday night. A Defence Department spokesman, Fred Hoffman, said the craft was “caught red-handed” laying mines in international waters. Iran says it was an innocent merchant ship. In layman’s terms, FLIR picks up the heat from bodies, engines and equipment and electronically enhances it to gen-

erate a television picture. “A good one (infra-red device) has about the same resolution as a black-and-white television,” said Lonnie Schuepbach of a defence contractor, FLIR Systems Inc., of Portland, Oregon, which makes the devices. Defence officials told Reuters that the Iranian crew members apparently did not realise they were being watched as they dumped mines after dark into Gulf waters used as an anchorage by

tankers plying the international .lanes. “We don’t know whether they heard the helicopters, but they continued to lay mines with at least one helicopter in the area,” one official said. Mr Hoffman said no warning was given before the attack. Administration officials told Reuters that at least one of two choppers was a small MD-500 equipped with a FLIR night vision device, 7.6 mm machine guns and 2.75-inch rockets.