From next year UK armed forces will be using a new "Surveillance System and Range Finder" which will allow soldiers to quickly spot and locate enemy positions up to 3 miles away, and call in the artillery using precisely-derived GPS coordinates. The new all-weather, day-and-night hand-held J-Tas devices are an improvement on older in-service versions which needed a tripod and lack thermal imaging. If you want to see what a view of enemy tanks through the sights might look like, check it out after the jump.
Designed to be lightweight, the J-Tas gadgets still pack in military-precision GPS, thermal imaging, and an eye-safe laser range-finder. The UK Ministry of Defense has just put 700 of them on order for a cool $60 million, and they'll be in service from 2009. [MOD]
DISCUSSION
Yes, those are M1 Abrams. That's not even what the UK Army uses. The have Challenger 2s.
I suspect they're spotting American tanks because in most recent conflicts a sizable fraction of UK casualties have come from US "friendly fire" incidents!