New Android-Based Sight To Send Image Directly to Command Center
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After years of designing, checking and testing, Elbit’s subsidiary Elsec has completed the development of the Xact sight, a brand new weapon sight that will improve its users’ accuracy, and have started to its serial production. The Xact is a new Android-based weapon sight for riflemen, designated marksmen and snipers, that will backward signal the image that the fighter sees through his sight to his fellow platoon members and to his commanders.
The new sight is basing itself upon established Elbit weapon sights, but its new features turn it into a “Smart-Sight”, with the same user interface that the fighter is already using on his mobile phone. The new sight is considered extra smart, because of the operational effectiveness that it gives to any military force: the force’s commander who will most of the times sit in an Operations Room will be able to choose which fighter would take the shot, basing himself on operational considerations that are not always visible to a fighter out on a mission, such as hostlie elements’ locations and the location of uninvolved civilians.
The live picture that the soldier sees also gets to his fellow fighters’ sights or to his direct commander through a tablet, whether it’s a marksmen’s ambush or full-on battle, all through a secured Wi-Fi network and BlueTooth.
The scope itself is thermal, meaning every hotter or cooler object, such as a parked terrorist car, or a car that has just arrived and its engine is still hot is seen clearly to the operator. Being thermal, the scope is mainly designed to be operated by night, but some versions include a day scope as well. the scope can be attached to the weapon through a picatinny rail adaptor to M-16s, M-4s, AK-47s and sniper rifles. The scope is uncooled and does not use starlight intensifying technology, unlike older night scopes, so it can be used in pitch dark rooms or tunnels, and during the day.
The new sight is very light and only weighs a few hundred grams, much lighter than current IDF used night vision scopes such as Aquila or Li-Or. Also, said scopes use the relatively old technology of starlight intensifying, which is very photosensitive, and renders them unusable during the day.
Normal everyday batteries power the new scope, and can last up to eight hours of use. A tiny memory card also comes with sight, which the soldier can use to record his activity. At the end of his mission, the soldier can download his recordings to a computer in order to watch it later and learn, research or create an incriminating evidence for army intelligence.
The new sight enables riflemen to discover human targets up to 600 meters away, and an identifying distance of 300 meters. The designated marksmen version’s human discovery range is 1 kilometer and identifying is possible up to 600 meters. The sniper version has a discovery range of two kilometers away, and an identifying range of 1 kilometer.
The scope is operational and is being sold to the Australian army. Its price goes up to a few tens of thousands of Shekels, depends on the purchased amount. The sight is manufactured on Elsec’s production line in its factory in Sderot, Israel. The workers manufacture the scope in 4 production steps: the first, assembling and gluing the hundreds of small parts by hand. then, burning the Android software into the sight. The third step is integrating between the hardware and software, and the last step is testing and doing computerized and manual quality control.
