France places additional order for Thales’s O-NYX night vision goggles
- The French armed forces have demonstrated renewed trust in Thales, extending a long-standing partnership in night vision solutions with a new order for 3,000 O-NYX goggles.
- The additional 3,000 night vision goggles ordered by the French Armament General Directorate (DGA) will be delivered in 2021 for deployment into French Army units alongside the 3,500 O-NYX goggles already delivered.
- O-NYX goggles offer higher performance and are lighter and more comfortable to wear than other night vision devices. They are manufactured at the Thales site in Saint-Héand.
With more than 80 years of experience in high-end optics and more than 110,000 night vision goggles in service worldwide, Thales has built on feedback from successive generations of operational users to enhance the perception of soldiers on night-time missions.
Weighing less than 350 g, O-NYX goggles have a patented low-profile design that shortens the distance between the eyes and the centre of gravity of the equipment to minimise neck strain and improve wearing comfort for prolonged use. But as well as being easy to wear, O-NYX goggles deliver significant improvements in optical performance.
Over the years, Thales has worked with successive generations of operational users and harnessed the latest advances in light intensification technology to bring featherweight, ultra-compact goggles within reach of each and every infantry soldier who needs to operate at night.
O-NYX goggles offer a 51° field of view, expanding the observed scene by 70% compared with conventional goggles, and the combination of pin-sharp resolution and a wider field of view augments the soldier's perception and enhances situational awareness. With its low energy consumption, the new goggle will work for up to 40 hours on a single charge and can run on standard AA batteries when needed.
The O-NYX programme is part of moves to replace small equipment — items like handguns, helmets and bullet-proof vests — under the current French defence spending plan.
Underpinning Thales’s leadership in the optronics market is the Group’s end-to-end technology expertise, an integrated approach to product development and active engagement with an ecosystem of innovative industry partners in France.
For the O-NYX French programme, Thales’s partner Photonis enhanced the performance of its image intensification tubes and worked with the DGA and the French Army to validate its latest 4G tube technology, which increases optical performance by 50-60% compared to existing solutions.
The latest order for O-NYX night vision goggles is a further endorsement of Thales’s ability to combine all these capabilities with the experience and insights of operational users to build a future we can all trust.
"The French Army is known to be a demanding user with active experience in theatres. The deployment of the first O-NYX goggles with units in the field is a source of huge satisfaction for our teams. Importantly, this new product was co-developed with operational users every step of the way, reflecting Thales’s commitment to customer-centric innovation." Benoit Plantier, VP Optronics and Missile Electronics activities at Thales.
