Night tracer firefight

[TXAZ]

For those that have been in a night time firefight with tracers:
2 questions:
What’s it like seeing tracers from the other guy flying around you?
Is there such a thing as an IR or night vision only goggles tracer round that the unaided eye can’t see, or a delayed action tracer that doesn’t light up until some distance away from where it was fired so as not to alert the other side exactly where it came from?

 

[5whiskey]

To the first, scary as all get out, but many people flip the switch and do what they are supposed to do. Granted I never had tracers fly by within inches, I’ve never taken sustained fire that accurate. Seeing green zoom by 6” from my head would probably make me think about a lot of things real quick... but foremost seeking cover.

FWIW, America (or any allied nations that I’m aware of) have not been in an active conflict with any near peer adversary that has the ability to direct accurate aimed fire at night time in the past 20-30 years... so long as allied forces do their part and practice light discipline. The taliban and mujahaden didn’t have thermal or IR sighting systems. Nor tracers half the time. Their guide was the term “Inshallah,” which generally didn’t work well for them. Hence why I never received accurate aimed incoming fire in the darkness. I have been on the receiving end of accurate enough fire in the day time. Definitely not what I would call a good time these days, but I would imagine it would be a bit scarier at night with tracers whizzing and skipping all around.

I do not know of any IR only tracers. I don’t think we have the technology for that, as most IR only light sources involve either light filters or electronic lights. Not sure if there is a chemical burn that is IR only. I’ve seen some older ones that couldn’t be seen well at all in daylight. They still were easily enough visible at night without IR.

 

[44 AMP]

I have heard the US has chem lights that give off light in either the IR or UV bands, invisible to the naked eye.

Never saw any (though admittedly I haven't looked) so don't know if they exist or not. Never heard of anything like that applied to tracer rounds, either.

I think one of the points of tracers is that everyone sees them. And, while that includes the enemy, it also includes all the other guys on your side (and without special goggles) which might be a very useful thing, at times...

In the old days we were told to put a tracer as the second round you loaded in your magazine, the idea being, when you saw that tracer go out, it was time to put in a fresh magazine, while still having a round in the chamber while you did it.

OF course, the people who told us that never gave us any tracers to do it with, but, that's the Army for ya!

 

[jonnyc]

As 5Whiskey said, scary as all hell coming in, but conversely really neat going out.
And yes, there are IR tracers, and most modern tracers are delay-lighting to both protect the shooters eyes and position.

 

[Rob228]

I have heard the US has chem lights that give off light in either the IR or UV bands, invisible to the naked eye.

They aren't quite invisible to the naked eye, they glow very faintly. Picture a regular chemlight but instead of being made of clear plastic they are a very dark red. Through NVGs they glow just as bright as a regular chemlight.



During the first night of the invasion of Iraq we had a long range discussion with some folks who did not appreciate the fact that we were there. The "wisdom" at the time was that you load tracers for your first five and last five rounds. I honestly cannot remember seeing a single tracer go downrange even though it was nighttime. Our team on the other side of the river (we were on the Al Faw peninsula) said it looked like WWIII kicked off.

Judging by how quickly the 50+ fellows decided to surrender I would guess that incoming tracers are terrifying. But again, I do not recall seeing a single one outbound even though quite a few people in different vantage points saw them.

The two most terrifying things I've ever experienced in the IR spectrum was late one night/early one morning when me and five of my closest friends were sneaking around doing things and we had a massive IR searchlight sweep over us, then (this is the terrifying part) narrow the beam to encompass just us. It was an A/C 130 (Callsign Basher) that luckily recognized us as friendlies.
The second one was a similar situation involving Cobras. They were prosecuting targets inside of a city that we were finding routes into and happened to be right overhead. Turning on an IR strobe would have looked like muzzle flash to them and would not have worked out well. When I asked my platoon commander over the radio to let them know we were in the area his response was "they should know". I've never hated the word "should" so much in my life. Joke was on him, he got food poisoning.

 

[dakota.potts]

There is "Dim" tracer ammunition which is loaded with flash-reducing propellants and is less visible to the eye (some sources say invisible) but visible under NODs. I don't know that it's ever caught on in 5.56 but I've seen it linked in 7.62mm.

 

[5whiskey]

but conversely really neat going out.

This too! I forgot to add that shooting with tracers is a neat education into What a round will do once fired. Berms don’t necessarily stop them, as most machine gunners know.

I have heard the US has chem lights that give off light in either the IR or UV bands, invisible to the naked eye.

Yes those exist. The plastic is colored to filter out most light but IR light. You can see an ever so faint glow with the naked eye, but on a full moon night you would probably miss it.

 

[T. O'Heir]

"...delayed action tracer..." Trace doesn't light up until it's several meters away from the muzzle.
Trace can tell you if it is the 'other guy'. Warsaw Pact trace isn't orange/red. It's usually green. If the fireball is elongated, it's not coming at you. If it's round, it is.
However, it's not the tracer round you really need to worry about. Between each of 'em is at least 5, depending who you annoyed, ball rounds.
Trace isn't normally used by riflemen anyway. It's an MG thing. And "scary" is being polite.
"...the term “Inshallah”..." Means approximately, "If or as god wills it." That doesn't work much either.
"...never received accurate aimed incoming fire..." That'd be a good thing. Mind you, inaccurate, unaimed, incoming, fire is just as unpleasant. Accurate aimed incoming fire means there's a sniper. A trained one with a real sniper's rifle.
"..."they should know"..." You'd think that. However, Air Force guys are well known for dropping things on their own side. The Air NG guy, in an F16 I think it was, dropped on a bunch of CF PBI guys. It was suspected that the guy wanted to drop on somebody. Careers are made by being in combat.

 

[jonnyc]

"Berms don’t necessarily stop them, as most machine gunners know."

I was a Mag58 gunner for a while and the tracers really were an education. Night attacks on "Egged" buses showed you how far and wide ricochets would go. We also used to train on beaches and used the Med as a "backstop". Those tracers seemed to skip over the ocean for miles.
As I posted above, the out-going was really neat...the incoming not so much. Better off not knowing what's coming in!