Aiding Police, Then Soldiers

Criminal suspects usually run when they've been spotted by a helicopter searchlight. But some law enforcement units use a tactic to mislead - by aiming the searchlight in one direction while secretly tracking the suspect, who thinks he's hidden in a tree or a bush, with an infrared camera.

FLIR Systems makes infrared cameras that allow police to pluck a suspect out of the dark.

"You chase the perpetrator on the ground, he keeps on running," said Bill Sundermeier, who heads FLIR's Government Systems division. With a FLIR infrared detector mounted on a law enforcement helicopter, police can "corral" a suspect on the sly.

"You can direct the officers in and around to surround him," Sundermeier said. "And then, boom, you dump the spotlight right on him and say it's all over."

Now FLIR is trying to use its success in the law-enforcement and commercial markets to get a bigger slice of the U.S. military's infrared-sensors funding, a market dominated by heavyweights like Raytheon and L-3 Communications. Company officials plan to use their firm's growing commercial production to hold down price tags on military products, such as systems that combine infrared cameras with visible light cameras, low-light cameras, laser rangefinders and laser designators to aim weapons.

FLIR expects to break the $1 billion mark in revenue this year. It had a big chunk - 38 percent - of the worldwide "dual-use" infrared market in 2007, according to Maxtech International, a Fairfield, Conn., market research firm that tracks the infrared industry.

"Dual-use" products overlap defense and commercial uses. They include FLIR's Recon III thermal binoculars, which can help a soldier in Iraq or a security guard at a commercial warehouse see at night. The runner-up in the dual-use market is L-3 Communications, New York.

But FLIR's share of the global military infrared market is much smaller, just 5 percent. FLIR's military work is focused in its Government Systems division, which accounted for just under half of FLIR's 2007 revenue. The division's infrared offerings range from handheld devices like the thermal binoculars, to sphere-shaped gimbaled systems for aircraft and ships, to stationary devices mounted on everything from vehicles, ships and aircraft to towers for the U.S. Army's Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment program.

The other half of FLIR's revenue comes from commercial vision systems and thermographic heat-measurement products.

A Dual-Use Strategy

Sundermeier said the relatively low cost of FLIR's nondefense products has helped it snag a large chunk of the dual-use market.

"You have other companies that are focusing just on pure military applications, and those are very expensive solutions, which are unaffordable to the commercial side," he said. "We have a strategy which is to build up products that we think are in the sweet spot, that can be used for many different applications. Then, once we ... can sell that in volume, we end up driving down costs and we end up taking more of a high-tech strategy ... as compared to a DoD-funded strategy for developing products."

FLIR spent just over 9 percent of its 2007 revenue on research and development, a higher percentage than larger competitors like L-3 and Raytheon, if a much smaller total. That helps FLIR retain control over its products.

"If we go with the military funding approach, we might get forced into a particular product that's only purpose-built for them," Sundermeier said. "It's really more difficult to back it out and make it a general-purpose product ... that other people can afford."

Instead, FLIR makes small and often inexpensive adjustments to nondefense products to meet military needs, said Gabor Fulop, president of Maxtech International. "One of the reasons for [FLIR's] success is that they can very easily migrate between the commercial and the military," Fulop said.

For example, a version of FLIR's Star Safire, an airborne thermal imaging device, was used by police for years before FLIR modified it for military use, he said.

The largest of FLIR's military orders this year is a $358 million addition to a contract with the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command for Star Safire III multisensor systems.

Sundermeier is optimistic that prices will fall, perhaps even allowing every U.S. Army soldier to carry some product made by FLIR.

"Just like every policeman has a flashlight, we're hoping that they're going to have a piece of IR [infrared] equipment to look in the bushes, look much farther than their flashlight could ever look," Sundermeier said. "The same is true for the soldier - why wouldn't they have an infrared sight for their rifle or an infrared sight for their helmet? ... I think it will happen in the next decade or less."

Still, FLIR's thermal binoculars cost about $50,000; the company's thermal rifle sights are expected to cost around $20,000 apiece.

Michael Lewis, an analyst who follows FLIR for BB&T Capital Markets in McLean, Va., said FLIR is well-positioned to make inroads into the military market.

"There'll be more money directed to these infrared systems in the future, which will allow for more market growth opportunities for smaller players like FLIR," Lewis said. "It's easier for FLIR to ... identify areas where a competitor is not performing up to the requirement of the customer and take market share that way, and that's what they've been successful doing."

Also, "the [U.S.] government is becoming more price-sensitive, so if FLIR's indeed the true low-cost provider, that is absolutely a positive for them," he said.

Lewis said in the next five to seven years, the big growth opportunity for infrared makers will be in mobile, land-based platforms and cameras for fixed forward operating bases.

FLIR has correctly identi-fied the ground-based market as fertile, but a FLIR product in every soldier's pack may not happen in the near term, Lewis said.

"Right now, from here to the next five, seven or 10 years, probably not, because of price points. But there's still the opportunity," he said. "The Defense Department wants to get these types of force-multiplier/force-protection systems embedded at the soldier level."

FLIR Continues Cedip Integration

FLIR ATS Press Release

FLIR ATS (ex-Cedip, www.cedip-infrared.com) has changed its cameras range name to finalize its integration within the FLIR group. Indeed, since 2008 FLIR Systems, the world leader in design and manufacturing of infrared cameras, has become the majority shareholder of Cedip Infrared Systems, the French supplier of high performance infrared cameras & systems. The two specialists have joined forces in the manufacturing and marketing of cooled mid- and long-wave infrared cameras for the science, R&D and thermography markets.

As a first step, Cedip in becoming part of the FLIR group changed its name by FLIR ATS, FLIR Advanced Thermal Solutions.

As a 2nd step, all Cedip/FLIR ATS products have been integrated into the FLIR ranges.

As a 3rd step, all FLIR ATS products names have been standardized with the FLIR Systems naming conventions. The FLIR ATS products being high-end solutions & corresponding to the high range of products, they have been renamed with the prefix SC, like Science, products for Science & R&D applications. Number models were allocated as follow:

• SC2000 Series: Near infrared camera with extended wavelength from 0.8 µm to 2.5 µm.
• SC5000 Series: High performance cameras for users who need simplicity and performance in industry. Its motorized focus allows installing them in deported or harsh environments.
• SC7000 Series: Versatile very high performance cameras for advanced R&D users. Its wide diversity of detector configurations allows addressing any applications in academic and industrial researches.
• Orion SC7000 Series: Cameras dedicated to multi-spectral analysis application where spectral imaging or speed is a must.
• SC7900 VL Series: Unique large band spectral response camera with high sensitivity in the 8-12 µm range.

Find all these cameras & systems on www.cedip-infrared.com or www.flirthermography.com.

FLIR ATS offers a wide range of high-performance infrared imaging cameras and systems incorporating the latest technology in optics, infrared focal plane array detectors, electronic hardware and software. Founded in 1989 FLIR ATS is today recognised as a leading supplier of high-end Infrared Imaging solutions for industry, R&D, medical and thermography applications around the world.

What’s The Difference between Thermal Imaging and Night Vision?

Let’s start with a little background. Our eyes see reflected light. Daylight cameras, night vision devices, and the human eye all work on the same basic principle: visible light energy hits something and bounces off it, a detector then receives it and turns it into an image.

Whether an eyeball, or in a camera, these detectors must receive enough light or they can’t make an image. Obviously, there isn’t any sunlight to bounce off anything at night, so they’re limited to the light provided by starlight, moonlight and artificial lights. If there isn’t enough, they won’t do much to help you see.

Thermal imaging cameras
Thermal imagers are altogether different. In fact, we call them “cameras” but they are really sensors. To understand how they work, the first thing you have to do is forget everything you thought you knew about how cameras make pictures.

FLIRs make pictures from heat, not visible light. Heat (also called infrared, or thermal, energy) and light are both parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a camera that can detect visible light won’t see thermal energy, and vice versa.

Thermal cameras detect more than just heat though; they detect tiny differences in heat – as small as 0.01°C – and display them as shades of grey in black and white TV video. This can be a tricky idea to get across, and many people just don’t understand the concept, so we’ll spend a little time explaining it.

Everything we encounter in our day-to-day lives gives off thermal energy, even ice. The hotter something is the more thermal energy it emits. This emitted thermal energy is called a “heat signature.” When two objects next to one another have even subtly different heat signatures, they show up quite clearly to a FLIR regardless of lighting conditions.

Thermal energy comes from a combination of sources, depending on what you are viewing at the time. Some things – warm-blooded animals (including people!), engines, and machinery, for example – create their own heat, either biologically or mechanically. Other things – land, rocks, buoys, vegetation – absorb heat from the sun during the day and radiate it off during the night.

Because different materials absorb and radiate thermal energy at different rates, an area that we think of as being one temperature is actually a mosaic of subtly different temperatures. This is why a log that’s been in the water for days on end will appear to be a different temperature than the water, and is therefore visible to a thermal imager. FLIRs detect these temperature differences and translate them into image detail.

While all this can seem rather complex, the reality is that modern thermal cameras are extremely easy to use. Their imagery is clear and easy to understand, requiring no training or interpretation. If you can watch TV, you can use a FLIR thermal camera.

Night vision devices
Those greenish pictures we see in the movies and on TV come from night vision goggles (NVGs) or other devices that use the same core technologies. NVGs take in small amounts of visible light, magnify it greatly, and project that on a display.

Cameras made from NVG technology have the same limitations as the naked eye: if there isn’t enough visible light available, they can’t see well. The imaging performance of anything that relies on reflected light is limited by the amount and strength of the light being reflected.

NVG and other lowlight cameras are not very useful during twilight hours, when there is too much light for them to work effectively, but not enough light for you to see with the naked eye. Thermal cameras aren’t affected by visible light, so they can give you clear pictures even when you are looking into the setting sun. In fact, you can aim a spotlight at a FLIR and still get a perfect picture.

Infrared illuminated (I²) cameras
I² cameras try to generate their own reflected light by projecting a beam of near-infrared energy that their imager can see when it bounces off an object. This works to a point, but I² cameras still rely on reflected light to make an image, so they have the same limitations as any other night vision camera that depends on reflected light energy – short range, and poor contrast.

Contrast
All of these visible light cameras – daylight cameras, NVG cameras, and I² cameras – work by detecting reflected light energy. But the amount of reflected light they receive is not the only factor that determines whether or not you’ll be able to see with these cameras: image contrast matters, too.

If you’re looking at something with lots of contrast compared to its surroundings, you’ll have a better chance of seeing it with a visible light camera. If it doesn’t have good contrast, you won’t see it well, no matter how bright the sun is shining. A white object seen against a dark background has lots of contrast. A darker object, however, will be hard for these cameras to see against a dark background. This is called having poor contrast. At night, when the lack of visible light naturally decreases image contrast, visible light camera performance suffers even more.

Thermal imagers don’t have any of these shortcomings. First, they have nothing to do with reflected light energy: they see heat. Everything you see in normal daily life has a heat signature. This is why you have a much better chance of seeing something at night with a thermal imager than you do with visible light camera, even a night vision camera.

In fact, many of the objects you could be looking for, like people, generate their own contrast because they generate their own heat. Thermal imagers can see them well because they don’t just make pictures from heat; they make pictures from the minute differences in heat between objects.

Close
Night vision devices have the same drawbacks that daylight and lowlight TV cameras do: they need enough light, and enough contrast to create usable images. Thermal imagers, on the other hand, see clearly day and night, while creating their own contrast. Without a doubt, thermal cameras are the best 24-hour imaging option.