The Case for Thermal Imaging: How Thermal Enhances Citizen Preparedness

The below article was written for salvosmodum.com by a new friend of ours, Major Jonas Christian Frey, from the Swiss Armed Forces (Schweizer Armee). Major Frey is a graduate of the Military Academy at ETH Zurich and serves as a regular officer in the Swiss Armed Forces’ Command Support Training Formation. His work focuses primarily on the education and development of military leaders in the fields of leadership, training methodology, and tactics. His practical expertise in applied military science is complemented by several years of command experience, deployments abroad, and multinational exercises conducted up to task group level as part of the Swiss Army Special Forces. Alongside his military career, he works as a freelance journalist, writing on general and military history, European politics, geopolitics, security policy and leadership for national and international publications.

Please note that some pictures and minor details have been provided by Georges Z. Fahmy.

Why Thermal Makes Sense for the Prepared Citizen

Mike Jones, better known as Garand Thumb, is a former U.S. Air Force Special Warfare officer and survival instructor who today runs one of YouTube’s best-known channels covering military skills, fieldcraft, firearms and equipment. In a 2022 video on urban survival, he pulled a handheld thermal imager from his pack and gave viewers a rather memorable piece of advice: “If you don't have thermal, you're going to die to somebody who does use thermal.”

The phrasing is deliberately dramatic, but the basic argument is worth taking seriously. Thermal imaging has become smaller, better and dramatically more affordable. What was once a highly specialized capability is now readily available as ordinary commercial hunting and outdoor equipment.

For the prepared citizen, particularly in an urban or suburban environment, that makes thermal one of the most interesting observation capabilities currently available. Checking the garden after hearing something unusual, scanning a street or courtyard, observing the approaches to a building during a power outage or simply trying to determine whether that shape among vegetation is a person, an animal or nothing at all are fundamentally detection problems.

Most importantly, they are not exclusively nighttime problems.

Recently parked cars can be clearly distinguished from longer parked ones. This should tell you something about recent activity. Remember: Pay attention to the absence of the normal and the presence of the abnormal!

What Do You Actually Need to Observe?

Perhaps the better question is what you actually need an observation device to do.

Thermal is often grouped together with night vision because its advantages become particularly obvious after dark. Technically however, it is not a night vision device at all: It detects differences in thermal radiation rather than amplifying available light. Therefore, it works in daytime as well as in nighttime. A person partly obscured by vegetation, standing in deep shade or visually blending into a complicated background, may be considerably easier to detect thermally, even at noon.

A Swiss village from some distance away. One can distinguish the facades facing the sun or possibly which houses are heated. Notice the walking person that’s now clearly visible in the thermal view (Bottom picture). Said individual would be very hard to distinguish at this distance by the naked eye and even through some magnification device.

And while sun-heated terrain can reduce thermal contrast (Particularly on hot days), daylight does not switch the capability off. That is an important distinction that particularly matters for the prepared citizen, that uses observation for primarily defensive purposes: You want to detect something before it becomes an immediate problem, ideally without changing location or drawing attention to yourself.

Night vision and thermal imaging therefore have overlapping but different strengths. If forced to simplify them, I would describe thermal as the better defensive observation tool and image-intensifier night vision as the better movement tool. Night vision allows a user to walk, navigate and interact with the environment far more naturally, whereas Thermal makes heat signatures conspicuous against their surroundings.

Urban environments, even at night, still have a fair amount of illumination, thus allowing Night Vision equipment function. Remember: Total darkness kills your Night Vision as there’s no light to amplify.

FalconClaw, an Estonian company specializing in night vision and thermal equipment, as well as the practical field testing of both technologies, demonstrated this difference nicely in a series of comparisons. In one set of scenarios, even an inexperienced thermal user repeatedly detected an experienced night-vision user first. This was an informal practical test rather than laboratory science, but it illustrates the fundamental advantage remarkably well: Finding a person while using thermal devices can be surprisingly easy. For many prepared citizens, that may be the capability that matters first.

For the naked eye, the camouflaged soldier isn’t visible (He’s wearing full camouflage uniform including a camouflage poncho but no camouflage cream).

But What About Night Vision Goggles (NVGs)?

Image-intensifier night vision, such as the technology found in a head-mounted PVS-14, is an extraordinary capability. It allows observation and movement under very low light and is vastly more useful for navigating through an environment than staring into a handheld thermal display. It is also sinfully expensive for normal citizens.

As a result, some started ogling the Poor Man’s PVS-14: Them inexpensive digital night-vision devices. And, while there is nothing inherently wrong with digital night vision, (Whose technology continues to improve), it DOES NOT and CANNOT provide the same capability as an image-intensifier system.

In genuinely dark conditions, many budget digital devices depend heavily on an infrared illuminator to produce a useful picture. Said light is invisible to the naked eye, which can create a misleading sense that the user is observing covertly. Sadly, someone equipped with “real” night vision (Thus capable of detecting that infrared illumination) may see something quite different: Nightfox, itself a manufacturer of digital night-vision devices, explicitly warns users that other night-vision systems may detect the IR signature. In other words, an IR illuminator is still a light source. You simply cannot see it with your naked eyes.

For wildlife observation or normal recreational use this may be irrelevant. In a deteriorated security environment, where avoiding unnecessary signatures is part of observation and survival, this matter deserves considerably more thought.

Therefore, if quality image-intensifier night vision is outside the budget and the choice is between an inexpensive digital NVG and a useful handheld thermal, I would strongly consider buying the thermal first.

An interesting option, particularly for those who have access to Russian Military-Grade equipment in the Levant is to look at the Russian Dedal series of Night Vision scopes: One example is the Dedal 450 Night Vision rifle scope, that was fairly used in the Syrian Civil War and was smuggled into Lebanon by Hezbollah weapons dealers.

The carbine-sized AK104 in 7.62x39 is a compact platform that, suppressed and coupled with a Dedal 450 Scope, can have an effective range of up to 150 meters and engage targets at night, preferably in urban environments. Even with the diminutive 20-round magazine, the setup is quite potent (Albeit heavy). Note the blue masking tape on the Weapon-mounted light to minimize glare and light NDs.

The advantage of this NV setup is that it can be zeroed as well as used during the day, and would be useful for urban sniping purposes.

Day of the Jackal, Beirut Edition :D

Despite everything, Night Vision scopes are not as easy to employ in real-life as their counterparts in Call of Duty Wet Works 11: The image isn’t the crispiest, but it’s better than thoughts and prayers after dark.

The Dedal 450 can be used and zeroed across calibers and platforms, and has a PSO-1 like series of chevrons that appear red when illuminated. In our humble opinion, pushing it further than 150 meters, especially suppressed, would be unwise as it’s a Gen II+ tube and visual clarity isn’t the sharpest for Identifying Friend and Foe (IFF) purposes.

Thermal Has Become Affordable

The price development is what makes that recommendation realistic.

Commercial hunting thermals from established manufacturers have reached the point where a useful handheld device can be bought for a high three-digit or low four-digit amount. Pulsar is a good example and a brand with which I have practical experience.

The Pulsar Alaris XQ30, used to take all the thermal pictures in this article, has, for example, a 384×288 thermal sensor, a relatively low 2× base magnification and a wide field of view in a unit weighing around 300 grams. Depending on market and retailer, it sits around the thousand-euro mark or below.

Those characteristics fit the intended use well. In an urban environment, a prepared citizen may be scanning a garden, street, parking area, building approach or nearby vegetation. A compact device with a broad field of view makes it possible to search such areas quickly and then investigate whatever appears unusual.

A lightweight kit easily concealable on your person in urban environments: Ruger LCP II in .22LR with a trigger guard holster, CCI Stinger ammo, a Station IX No 13 Push Dagger, a normal Sharpie marker (Sorry not the G10 thingie :P), and the Pulsar Alaris XQ30 thermal monocular. The kit shown has its place in certain situations ;)

More expensive 640-resolution thermals provide better detail, and higher-end systems offer additional features. But the important development is that useful thermal detection is no longer confined to military or government users.

There is also a conceptual advantage that is easy to overlook: the same device remains useful during the day. A thermal monocular is therefore not something that spends daylight hours sitting uselessly in a pouch waiting for sunset. It adds another spectrum to normal human vision around the clock.

Here is another load-out, this one being more suitable a rural or semi-rural observation post: Some camouflage material, a Alpen Optics Crestone XP 7x24 laser rangefinder, a 8x30 Leica Swiss Army Issue binoculars, a Pulsar Alaris XQ30 thermal imaging device, and a Sig 550 assault rifle in 5.56x45.

What Thermal Can – and Cannot – Do

The first experience with a good thermal can be slightly disconcerting. Things that the naked eye has overlooked suddenly become obvious. Animals appear inside vegetation. A person standing in shadow separates from the background. Recently operated machinery may remain thermally distinctive. At night, the contrast can become even more pronounced.

The difference in temperature of the motor and the wheels can be seen clearly with thermal imaging. This vehicle was recently used and is still warm. Remember the baseline ambient temperature though!

But thermal is not X-ray vision. It does not see through walls. It measures the thermal radiation reaching the sensor from surfaces. Nor will a normal handheld thermal see through ordinary window glass, which is particularly relevant in an urban environment. Trying to observe a street through a closed window may result in seeing the thermal characteristics of the glass – and possibly your own reflection – rather than the people outside.

Anybody home? Sadly, there is no way to tell, thermal imaging cannot look past obstacles, even as thin as glass...

Weather and temperature also matter. Rain, humidity and fog can reduce performance, while hot surfaces exposed to direct sunlight can reduce the contrast between a person and the surrounding environment. A cool morning and a sun-baked city in mid-afternoon are very different thermal environments.

The other limitation is interpretation. There is an important difference between detecting that something is present, recognizing what kind of object it is, and positively identifying exactly what or who you are looking at. A thermal imager may reveal a human-sized heat signature at considerable distance without providing enough detail to establish who the person is or precisely what they are doing.

Is this a scene from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Fortunately no, it’s just some sun-warmed rocks somewhere in the Swiss mountainside with a postman that only rings thrice :P

That is why I see thermal primarily as an observation and detection device rather than something that replaces every other optic.

Predator vision is cool but it doesn’t let you distinguish between friend and foe. Target engagement will have to be done after proper identification to avoid friendly-fire incidents.

Assume Others Have It Too

There is another reason why prepared citizens should understand thermal imaging: The technology is no longer limited to Tier-One armed forces.

This does not mean that every criminal, terrorist, or irregular fighter carries thermal equipment. It means that in a contemporary conflict or serious breakdown of security, assuming that non-state actors cannot obtain it is no longer reasonable.

Syria provides a particularly relevant example. A United Nations investigation documented thermal optics used by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib, including commercial Pulsar Apex and Infiray devices. The report noted that some of these systems had originally been intended for hunting and civilian use and had been commercially purchased abroad before reaching Syria. That is an important development precisely because there is nothing exotic about the supply chain. The same commercialization that makes thermal attractive to hunters, outdoor users and prepared citizens also makes the technology available far beyond conventional military units.

The phenomenon is not confined to Syria. Hezbollah procurement networks sought thermal-imaging equipment in the United States decades ago, while a 2024 UN report described Al-Shabaab efforts to acquire drones equipped with thermal sensors for surveillance and reconnaissance. Lessons from Ukraine likewise show how widely thermal cameras have spread across both airborne and ground-based systems.

For the prepared citizen, the immediate lesson is simple: Thermal imaging provides a passive, compact and increasingly affordable way of extending observation beyond what human eyesight can achieve, and it does so during the day as well as at night.

Thermal imaging makes the outline of the bike and the trailer visible in the shadows.

Image-intensifier night vision remains a superb capability, particularly when movement becomes the priority. Thermal does something different: It makes things easier to find that you might otherwise have missed.

Therefore, if I were to build a prepared citizen's observation capability from zero, I would start with thermal.

In conclusion, if you can only afford to buy a cheap device, get a cheap thermal (That will work just fine) but NEVER a cheap night vision device (That will light you up like a Christmas tree to anyone with proper NVGs).

References:

Garand Thumb: Basics of Urban Combat Survival and Assault Pack Setup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL5wePSjTL8

FalconClaw: Thermal versus Night Vision – Tactical Scenarios

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHs7rMHLMwo