I’ve heard it was because red light waves don’t travel that far, but I can see the red light on an airplane wing that’s miles away.
In: Technology
Tactical is something of a marketing term, so can be used in many different ways to sell a flashlight…
The red lenses however, are used for a specific reason, which is preserving somebody’s night vision.
The human eye takes time you adapt to changing light levels – when you turn off the light in a darkened room for example, at first you can see nothing, just blackness. But if you wait for a moment your eyes will adapt and you will start to see some detail.
What this means is if you are somewhere dark, it might be preferable to let your eyes adapt to the darkness to see, rather than using a torch – this means you can see everything, rather than just the little spot that the torch points at, and it is much harder for other people to see you.
This is a problem however if you need to do something specific like read a map – if you turn on a white light it ruins your night vision, and when you turn off the torch your eyes will take time to as adapt again. The way the human eye works, it is less sensitive to red light than the blue/green light that makes up white, so while a white light ruins your night vision, a red light will not – so using s red torch will let you read a map or do a tall you need to see, while still preserving your night vision.
Generally this is considered as a ‘tactical’ thing as it is often used by the military as a way to operate in the dark more efficiently, and less likely to be seen by the enemy.
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