In the late 1980s, Navy SEAL Master Chief Jim Kauber, flew over the Persian Gulf at night strapped to the outside of an Army OH-58 helicopter, to interdict Iranian gunboats and mine layers. Outfitted with a Litton M-845 night vision device on his M-16, Jim was part of a then-unacknowledged project, “Earnest Will.” Kauber and his cohorts hunted in the darkness using the 58’s mast-mounted FLIR system, struck with no warning then disappeared before daylight. U.S. Special Operations Command credits these Gulf missions as, “the first successful night combat engagement that neutralized an enemy threat while using aviator night vision goggles and forward looking infrared devices.”