Army told to wait for Made-in-India night vision devices, Pakistan has the latest from United States

By the looks of it, the Army has an impressive Infantry, the second largest in the world, backed by a solid armoured thrust of over 3,000 tanks that can overwhelm the western front. But as soon as the sun goes down, the Army gets affected by a deadly case of night blindness.

For all practical purposes, the Army is fighting blind at night. Its soldiers face a glaring shortage of night vision devices, the ones in service are a generation behind what Pakistan already has and only 10 per cent of its tanks have a proven night-fighting capability.

In a modern scenario where most battles are fought under the cover of darkness, the inability to even see the enemy is crippling the war capabilities of the Army. While the top leadership is acutely aware of the shortcoming, efforts to procure new night vision devices for soldiers has been stuck in a tussle between the Army and the Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).

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