Military Grade Flight Suits

When it comes to the heat of battle, just the tiniest of tactics can make all the difference for survival. One of the best tactics being, shield yourself from the enemy while knowing exactly where they are. Which is why NIR-Compliant uniforms are so vital for the military.

NIR-Compliance refers to a unique type of cloth used in the manufacture of military uniforms. This cloth has been developed to mimic the same radiation level as your surroundings. This should hide you from infrared technology.

Infrared sight, which many people know more as night vision, thermal imaging or thermal vision, is what militaries use to spot people in poor light or at during the darkness of night. This type of infrared technology, though, has two different ways of working, both of which use different areas of the infrared spectrum:

Thermal imaging

Thermal imaging is what most of us think of when we consider night vision. Such as when you watch real-life police television chases, where you see a perpetrator running through gardens who thinks he’s invisible. In reality, though, we can all see him as an orange blob due to the heat his body emits.

Thermal imaging works using the upper section of the infrared spectrum. This portion emits light as heat, so objects that are warmer will emit more light and be seen clearer. As a human runs with a core temperature of around 99 degrees Fahrenheit, this can be easily seen on thermal imaging against trees or houses, which don’t have a high core temperature.

Image Enchantment

On the lower part of the spectrum, image enhancement allows vision in darkness by amplifying the visible and infrared portions of light surrounding an object. These are boosted until it’s possible to see that object, even in poor light.

This is the method that most night-vision devices (NVDs) use these days. The NVD with have an ocular lens that contains an image-intensifier tube, which is what will collect the light – both visible and invisible to the naked eye – and boost it until you get the familiar green phosphor image that we are familiar with.

So How Does NIR-Compliance Keep Our Troops Hidden?

When a piece of clothing is NIR-Compliant it blends you into the darkness and environment around you, making soldiers harder to detect to potential enemies. NIR image detectors work by looking for changes in light radiation, if there’s little or no change, then the person will be hard to spot.

NIR-Compliant uniforms need to use a fabric blend that will neither reflect NIR or UV light. Think of it as having camouflage right down to a molecular level, rather than just a special color or pattern.

Every Carter flight suits for sale on our site is NIR-Compliant. Not only that, they are also: made from breathable fabric, equipped with 2-way zippers, flame-resistant fabric, lots of functional pockets and made to fit their wearer like a glove.

These suits are all manufactured in the USA and all come with a certificate of compliance that guarantees suits are made to military standard MIL-C-83141ª – if the military trusts us, so can you!