 If you can't see like Predator, do you think you're going to make it hell over one Dylan Schumacher Citadel Defense and we're back with another edition of American Minuteman Gear. And today we're going to talk about thermal and do you as an American Minuteman for you know in China invades, whatever, blah, blah, blah, let the reader understand. Do you need thermal? So let's start with a couple things. First of all, thermal is not night vision, okay. It does not and you can see at night with thermal, but it does not amplify existing light. You can use thermal during the day, you can use it at night. I will say in my little trials with trying it during the day on like a hot day and by that I mean like above 80, it doesn't really do so hot because everything is so hot that it really can't tell temperature differentiations very effectively, right? Like your body is 98.6 degrees, right? When the sun is beating down on a rock on an 80 degree day that rock is going to get really hot. And so to be able to tell the difference because that's the way night vision works is temperature differentiations between the temperature of that rock and the temperature of your body. The rock might appear hotter than you. So it's just, it's hard to pick up like people and organic living objects shall we say during the day and a hotter day. Now maybe I haven't tried it to be fair on like a cold day, right? Like a 40 degree day or something. I bet it probably works pretty well then, but during like a hot day, not so much. And I've been just playing with this this this summer. So that's one, two, it does have limitations, right? Like it can't see through glass, for example, right? Which night vision can see through glass? No problem. Thermal can't do that. It can't necessarily see through like, if you were to put like a hold up like a poncho or whatever and be like two or three feet behind that poncho, it probably won't penetrate beyond that, right? Because it's going to pick up the temperature of that poncho. And if your body isn't close enough to either affect that poncho with your heat or for your heat to be visible through it, then, you know, you're good to go. So there are definitely limitations to it. Now, when I first got thermal, you know, it was supposed to be like this, this kind of eye of God thing is really how I had always heard about it. Like, oh, thermal, like, I mean night vision is cool, which night vision is cool, you should know night vision. But, you know, like thermal, like, oh, that's where it's at. Like, that's really true power, like eye of God kind of thing where you can just see everything and it just pops out. It's just it's amazing and whatever. And that's not been my experience, to be honest with you. I have been disappointed, underwhelmed, if you will, with thermal. Now, hey, I'm not a thermal expert. I've only ever had one. This is a Pulsar Xeon 2 XG35. So maybe you just want to tell me, hey, you're dealing your thermal sucks. That's what your problem is. And then maybe it is. And I don't have a drone with thermal. I don't have helicopters with thermal. I don't have that bird's eye view that I can do, right? I'm just talking about American Minuteman here, right? I'm a guy on the ground with my boys and I got thermal. How much capability does that give me or not give me? And at this point, I would say the best thing that thermal has provided me, owning thermal has provided me, is realizing that it's not, it's an advantage. I don't think it's a game changer. Like I would say night vision is a game changer. It changes the game. If you have night vision and someone else doesn't or vice versa, there is a severe and sharp power discrepancy there at night, obviously, right? Severe and sharp power discrepancy. Thermal? I mean, maybe if they have nothing and you have thermal, right? But if they have night vision, you have thermal, I don't know. I mean, it could go either way. It's not this powerful, like I said, eye of God kind of thing that at least I expected it to be. And what it had been built up to me, to be. So that's my first one. I would say I'm generally underwhelmed. Two, and you'll see this in the footage that I'm showing here. Maybe you've already seen this already, right? It like, it does this reset thing where it'll freeze frame for a while. And that's just part of the deal of thermal is my understanding. But when the frame freezes like that, it's not because your video is skipping or I edited poorly. It's because that's how it works. Every so often it has to like reset. I don't know all the technical terms behind that. I'm not a technical person. I've found out a long time ago, I'm a driver, not a mechanic, right? I just do the stuff. I don't like to figure out how it works. So maybe you can explain that better than I can, right? But point being, it has that limitation as well. The other big limitation is again, if you put any kind of foliage between you and the observation, that thermobility disappears. There's a couple clips I have in here of guys going prone in a field. When we're in the prairie here, and when you go prone with that tall grass, which is, you know, two, three feet high, you disappear. Like you're gone. You're gone on thermal. Like there's no recognition with that. So again, I think there are these limitations that exist with thermal. And I don't think it's this I've got thing. So that's the big thing. I do think there is benefit to thermal. And I think thermal benefits in a couple ways. Okay, so let's talk about as an American man, and that's the only perspective we're coming from here. That's the whole point of the series. How does thermal benefit you? Is it worth it? Okay. And I think it has a couple different benefits. Number one is, it's a good team item. And what I mean is, does every guy in your crew need thermal? No. Hard stop? No. You don't. To me, it's like an E tool, right? Not everybody needs an E tool. You need one, maybe two E tools, because everybody can't dig at the same time anyway. Right? Some people got to pull security. Some people got to dig, whatever. You only need one or two. It's not worth the weight to carry all of them. I think the same thing with thermal. You need one guy per unit, however you're organizing your units, right? Fire team, squad, whatever, to have a thermal. I don't think everybody needs one. The mage, which leads me to my second point. The major, major benefit for you as an American Minuteman with thermal is a scanning and detection. And that's really it. If you're patrolling it at night, to stop every 25, 50, 100, whatever, yards and scan with thermal and say, hey, is there anything out here? Can we pick up anything with thermal just to see what's out here? Because there are sometimes like, I think we saw some deer. And you might have already seen this footage already. I might be showing it right now, where we saw some deer out. And they were, I don't know, a couple hundred yards out. I could not have detected them without the thermal night vision. Nope, no way. Not going to pick it up. Thermal, they did pop, right? And they were looked to be some deer bedded down for the night. And you know, again, that was a place where, okay, thermal was helpful there, because I could detect something far out. And I could say the very least I can say, Hey, there's something there. There's something most likely living organic that is a severe temperature differentiation out there that we need to at least be aware of as we come up on it. Or maybe we're going to change our route because of it or whatever. But as a detection tool, I think that's where thermal shines. It's not. And again, I don't have a thermal scope in my gun. There's probably some really cool applications for that. But we're just talking about a monocular thermal in your crew here and the applications of that. And I think as detection device, that's where it works the best. Honestly, after having thermal, I wouldn't want a thermal scope really. I mean, maybe doing some night hunting on coyotes would be a lot of fun, but that's an expensive like range toy. From an American minimum perspective, just go with a red dot and a laser and leave the thermal in the detection category, right? So every team lead is for them to again, stop every so often and just scan and say, What else is out here? I think that's super helpful. Two, I think it works better in a rural environment or three, whatever we're on, it works better rural than it does urban. Can you still use it urban? Yeah, sure. And especially like dilapidated urban because that becomes more like rural, right? Because urban that's functioning, modern urban, let's call it, has a lot of electrical and there's just a lot of heat. There's just a lot of heat signatures. But if you're in some kind of war zone urban, well, there's going to be less power, less heat, less everything else. And so I think it could shine better there. But rural, I think rural thermal does better than urban thermal. That was really tough to say, apparently. In regards to that detection equipment, I was at SNS training solutions and I borrowed my thermal to one of the guys for this night patrol we were going on. We were going on to practice getting ambushed is essentially what you're doing. It's reactive contact drills, what you're doing at night. And we put the thermal guy up front in the lead, the lead fire team, and every so often he would stop and scan. And we got ambushed, but he detected it right before we got ambushed. Now, and these guys were like hidden in trees, you know, down the way. And he wasn't able to detect it early enough to warn us. But the fact that they were hidden in some wood line, he was able to detect it. And then we got shot right away. I think that speaks to, again, the benefits and the negativities of thermal, right? It's cool. He was able to detect it. We wouldn't have been able to see that with night vision. It didn't detect it early enough. Now, maybe there's some training gap, maybe there's some other stuff we could have done, right? Maybe we could have run that patrol better, maybe, maybe, maybe whatever. But I think to me that that perfectly illustrates the positives and negatives of the thermal in that it has a capability that night vision doesn't. Yes, long range detection, I think it does well at. But that's about it. It's not the superpower the way night vision is. If you were to come to me and say, hey, Dylan, I have no gear whatsoever. I'm buying all my Minuteman gear. Give me the list. Give me the ordered priority list. Thermals probably not in the top 10. Maybe it's not in the top 20. It's not super high on my priority list. Like I said already, the best benefit I've had from owning thermal is realizing that it's not the omnipotent superpower tool in the vein of night vision. It's similar, but if I only can pick one, I'm taking night vision every time. Thermal just isn't that overcoming of a power in my opinion. Now, maybe some other people have some different opinions out there and I'm open to being convinced. But I don't think for the American Minuteman and our application, it's all that. I mean, it's cool. It's nice to have, but it's not all that. And I would say, again, it shines in that detection region. If you can have one in your team, great. Beyond that, maybe you should get one so you can learn how to defeat it, right? So you can see yourself in thermal and see your buddies in thermal and you can figure out how to defeat it better. But for the $3,500, $4,000 starting price point, starting price point and going up from there, man, there's a lot else we could do with that $3,500 that I think would benefit you more. And I mean, I'm talking like, let's make sure you have a solid rifle. Let's get night vision first. Let's get you some training, right? If you have like, I have a rifle, I have night vision, I have plates and a chest rig and a rock and I mean, I'll score away and I got $3,500 to blow. Man, if you haven't been through like five or six classes, go do that first. Like there is a lot other stuff. If you haven't had solid medical course and gone to see like Dark Angel Medical or something, go do that. Like there is a lot better ways we can spend that money to benefit you more in your development and your growth than thermal. Thermal is cool. Don't get me wrong. It's cool. It's a nice to have. Me and my crew are going to use it because we have it, right? And we're going to use it as a detection like tool. But if you're like, man, we're lacking thermal out there, I would tell you, look, I don't think it puts you at that big of a disadvantage. And if you ever actually get thermal, you're going to realize it's not all that. It's not the superpower. It's not amazing. It's cool. But again, I don't think it's a high priority. I don't think it's the best spending of your money necessarily. Now, if you've got all the stuff already, you've got the night vision and you've got the training and, you know, you've got some solid equipment pieces like your rifle and your pack and all that stuff set up and good to go. Well, then, hey, maybe it is time to look at thermal. Maybe it is time to add that tool into your kit. Every time you add a tool, you gotta remember that causes additional training causes, I mean, but you require additional training, right? I've had to play around with this thing to learn how to use it. I struggled today just to plug it into my computer to figure out how to upload the footage. It ended up being pretty simple, but it took me like 20 or 30 minutes to figure out and I couldn't find the instructions anywhere, right? So there's just a learning curve with every piece of equipment, that GPS, that thermal, those nods, that all those lasers, those optics that all requires a training deficit that you have to make up and you have to upkeep. And the more pieces of equipment that we stuff on ourselves and on our gear and in our crew, the more overall training upkeep that is. As an American Mint Man, I don't know how much that behooves you. Rather than just keeping your kit simple and your skills high, right? That seems to me a much better tactic or strategy for the American Mint Man when pursuing how we're going to be the most effective fighters. So you take all that into consideration, you think about it. At the end of the day, I would tell you, you do not need thermal. I think it's a really nice to have, but I do not think it's necessary. I hope that's helpful. I hope that gives you some thoughts. Let me know your thoughts about thermal. You might have more experience than I do with it. Do brave deeds and endure.