Vietnam Was the Last Hurrah for the Army’s Giant Searchlights

http://warisboring.com/articles/vie...t-searchlights/


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Between 1965 and 1967, the Army deployed four searchlight batteries to South Vietnam. Technically artillery units, these soldiers spent most of their time keeping watch over friendly base camps, freeing up the infantry for other missions.

Soldiers could also point the beam of light exactly where it would be most useful. Focused to its brightest setting, the lamp could put out 400 million candlepower – far brighter than direct sunlight at noon – onto a target nearly 10,000 yards away. To a lesser degree, troops could brighten up the darkness across a broader area by bouncing the light off low-lying clouds or just shining it into the night sky.

But tests with the South Vietnamese Army showed that the system was far from perfect. Rain, fog and physical obstructions limited the light. Hardly ideal for discreet operations on the move, the arc lamps needed a large and noisy gasoline-powered generator to keep running. And no matter where they were, the big, bright lights offered a huge target for enemy troops.

In addition to being simpler and more efficient, the new AN/MSS-3 lights were small enough to fit on a standard M-151 jeep — and were able to put out beams in the visible or infrared spectrum. With special binoculars or telescopes, troops could see enemies without giving away their positions.

In 1969, the Army shipped nine new AN/TVS-3 searchlights to South Vietnam. Three years earlier, the ground combat branch had started working on these 30-inch xenon units as a similarly powerful replacement for the older carbon arc designs.

While the new units were successful, the writing was on the wall. “The 30-inch xenon searchlight be deployed … on a mission-justified basis,” the Army Concept Team in Vietnam evaluators wrote in their final report.