Keep your head down is good, sound advice when you're being shot at.
But in combat, that's not always an option.
Sometimes youve gotta return fire like a "Hail Mary" pass - over a wall or around a corner without necessarily being able to see your intended target.
But one of the combat accessories making a showing at this years Air and Space conference sponsored by the Air Force Association in Washington, D.C., could take away a lot of the guesswork from firing from behind obstacles, replacing it with a specialized sight that operates like a periscope.
The ParaScope Urban Combat Sight, developed by MTC Technologies of Dayton, Ohio, and being sold by Tactical & Survival Specialties Inc., has been two years in the testing - including by Marines in Iraq, said MCT Senior Vice President Robert D. Shuey III.
The device is mounted behind any existing scope - including night-vision optics - projecting the target image, with the targeting laser dot, back through it at any angle.
Shuey said the feedback from the Leathernecks has been positive.
"If you ask us if we like it, the answer is yes. If you ask for it back, the answer is we lost it," he said of the Marines response.
The company has been doing small-scale production of sights - fewer than 1,000 - but is now beginning to ramp up their manufacturing.
The sight is made up of multiple prisms, Shuey said, but is solid and ruggedized; no sand gets in to interfere with it or block vision.
Best of all, it requires no power source meaning no batteries to lug around - and it'll pinpoint objects up to 100 meters away, he said.
-- Bryant Jordan
(EDITOR: Jordan is a freelance military reporter based in Washington, D.C., and is a contributor to Military.com and Defense Tech.)
