As a lone hyperpower, with the military bankroll to match, the U.S. is rarely averse to fixing that which is not broken. Other nations—onetime signatories of the Warsaw Pact, especially—tend to be a tad more frugal. The Czech army used these analog night-vision binoculars for over 30 years while others were adopting digital replacements. Deutsche Optik, founded by German-born Justus Bauschinger when the fall of the Berlin Wall created a class of army-surplus oligarchs, is offering 285 of these individually numbered antiques at $449 each. "My dad was in the von Braun group, shooting rockets at London," says Bauschinger, who somehow turned out a pacifist. "We don't do weapons," he adds. "I don't like war." Nevertheless, there seems to be a bellicose binoc market in his local National Guard division in Yerington, Nevada. He has sold half a dozen pairs to "gung ho" troops who lust after the crystalline infrared image, free of the graininess and light trails that can plague laser-borne models. "You can see like it was daytime," Bauschinger says. Good news for you; bad news for your target.
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