On a moonless night, at a secret location notable for its mosquito population, Goodrich and Raytheon officials gathered with U.S. Army night-vision experts for a demonstration of rival concepts for shortwave infrared cameras.

The 2004 demonstration was a turning point for advocates of the technology. For years, they had been exploring shortwave-light-sensitive materials — the equivalent of camera film — as alternatives to the heat-sensitive infrared detectors or light-amplifying technology used in today’s night-vision cameras or goggles.

Tapping the shortwave infrared spectrum was not new. U-2 spy planes have long carried SWIR cameras that required bulky, cryogenic systems. The devices in the 2004 demonstration were built around a detector material that did not require supercooling.

The test suggested it might be possible to build devices small enough to be carried by troops. In terms of fidelity, the SWIR cameras of both Goodrich and Raytheon worked better than the Army’s then-state-of-the-art night-vision electronics, said Alan Hoffman, chief scientist at Acumen Scientific, a small company in California. He was the Raytheon official who operated the camera at the undisclosed site. Hoffman said the weight and power limitations were not solved that night.

Shortwave infrared devices see objects at night by detecting the invisible, shortwave infrared radiation within reflected star light, city lights or the moon. They also work in daylight, or through haze or smoke, whereas other infrared sensors would be overwhelmed by heat or brightness. If advocates can master the technology, a spy aircraft or soldier would be able to use one camera, day or night.

The problem is that SWIR sensors cannot yet operate without cooling in desert conditions.

“Right now, it’s running at room temperature, but soldiers don’t work in a laboratory or air-conditioned rooms,” Hoffman said. Troops can’t be expected to carry the size batteries that would be necessary to power coolers for a meaningful period of time, he said.

Goggles are far from the only application under consideration. One of the leading advocates for the technology is Ed Hart, vice president of Goodrich ISR Systems in New Jersey. Hart has spent years briefing Pentagon officials and larger contractors about the potential of SWIR devices, sometimes using a private Web site his company maintains. “The pace has been pretty horrific for six or seven years,” Hart said.

Goodrich is exploring heat-mounted SWIR technology under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) night-vision program called MANTIS, for Multispectral Adaptive Networked Tactical Imaging System. Beyond that application, Hart reports that his company’s technology clients, which he declined to name other than DARPA, have identified about 25 potential uses for the SWIR sensor technology in development.

Raytheon and Goodrich are the main players in making the latest generation of SWIR sensor chips, the key component of SWIR night-vision cameras and goggles under development. The sensor chips have two main pieces: a SWIR light detector — made of a semiconductor material called indium gallium arsenide — and readout electronics.

Goodrich makes both components of its sensor chips, while Raytheon makes its own readout electronics and buys its detectors from Spectrolab, a division of Boeing; Aerius Photonics; and, sometimes, Goodrich.

Although Goodrich is accepted as the pioneer in the new generation of SWIR sensors, Raytheon might prove to be a capable competitor because of its history of ramping up sensors to mass production, once the technology has advanced.

Raytheon “jumped in late in the game,” Hoffman said. But “Raytheon is the elephant in the room, even though they just walked in the room.”

One of the first SWIR applications to come to fruition could turn out to be a sensor capable of providing views of targeting lasers on the battlefield. Targeting lasers are not visible with current night-vision goggles. If SWIR devices work as promised, soldiers would be able to view every targeting laser in use, including those used by the enemy, as well as so-called “overspill” or “underspill” conditions — when a misaligned targeting laser partially touches on an area in front of or behind the intended target, which may cause a weapon to strike in the wrong spot.

Goodrich is under contract with DARPA to develop a head-mounted SWIR camera for night vision under DARPA’s MANTIS program. The prototype will include a display and eyepiece so the camera can be integrated with a pair of ballistic goggles. These would provide similar performance to that of current night-vision goggles, but they would weigh less and be able to see the battlefield lasers.

Engineers also will try to fuse images from Goodrich’s SWIR sensors with those produced by thermal, visual and other wavelengths of light, said Mike Piacentino, technical director of vision systems for Sarnoff Corp. based in New Jersey.

The Sarnoff Acadia Fuser chip combines the images into one video readout, providing potential applications for UAVs, soldier-worn systems, ground vehicles and other systems.

DARPA officials have told contractors they want to produce prototypes of fieldable systems. Piacentino said that the industry expects the Pentagon to issue requests for proposals related to those prototypes over the next year or two.

Engineers also are testing SWIR cameras on unmanned aircraft. In August, Boeing, Goodrich and Insitu flight-tested an unmanned ScanEagle equipped with a SWIR camera that allowed the airplane’s operators to see objects in fog and rain. The flight test, dubbed a success by Boeing, also had the camera producing clear streaming video in day, twilight and night operations.

Hart said his company’s cameras for SWIR are not yet able to provide views in the darkest night conditions — with no starlight or moonlight — but he expects them to have that capability soon. Because SWIR cameras also work in daylight, a UAV sent out in the late afternoon would not have to be equipped with two cameras, one for day and one for night.

The technology within Goodrich’s SWIR sensors is adapted from the cameras flown aboard the U-2s since the early 1980s. Spies loved the SWIR cameras for their ability to peer through fog and haze, and view objects as far 130 miles away, a better range than other cameras.

The U-2 cameras use a compound semiconductor material — indium antinomide — as the detector, which must be super-cooled to a temperature of 70 Kelvin, or minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit. Goodrich’s latest generation of SWIR sensors, using the indium gallium arsenide semiconductor material that does not require super-cooling. An alternative other engineers are pursuing is mercury cadmium telluride.

Because shortwave infrared devices pick up invisible radiation on the edge of the visible spectrum, the SWIR images look like the images produced by visible light with the same shadows and contrast and facial details, only in black and white.

“People look like people; they don’t look like blobs,” Hart said.

Unlike current night-vision goggles, which amplify starlight or other ambient light from the visible light spectrum, SWIR sensors pick up individual photons and convert light in the SWIR spectrum to electrical signals, similar to digital photography. The photons can be produced from the natural recombination of oxygen and hydrogen atoms in the atmosphere at night, also referred to as night glow.

The SWIR camera view displays in thousands or even millions of pixels, which makes it much easier to send the image directly to a remote location. Night-vision uses light-amplification tubes that collect light from the visible light spectrum, reading like an analog signal, and its images must be converted to an electronic signal before they can be sent.

Another advantage of SWIR over traditional night-vision is that the pixelated SWIR display is easier to focus and to tune down bright areas of an image because each pixel can be addressed, Hart said. Headlights, streetlights and other sources of light blooms make it difficult to see into dark areas of a nighttime image — a dark alley, for example — with traditional night-vision goggles. But SWIR cameras don’t have the same problem.

“With night-vision goggles or tubes, the main weakness is in the urban environment,” Hart said, which troops are frequently encountering in the Iraq war.

Why haven’t SWIR applications caught on more quickly? Hart said the development process had to wait for two factors — for the expansion of the base of potential users who understand what it can do, and for the core technology to be developed into a decent night imaging system.

Hoffman of Acumen Scientific said that the advancement of SWIR sensor technology can be measured by the temperatures it can operate in. Five years ago, the sensors had to be cooled slightly — to 7 degrees Celsius — and now they can operate at 25 degrees, or room temperature.

That makes SWIR sensor technology already advanced enough for aircraft or land vehicles that can easily carry big batteries for the small coolers that would be required in desert battlefield conditions, Hoffman said.

Another issue is the technology’s relatively high cost compared to currently used night-vision technology, a problem driven by the fact that SWIR devices are not yet mass produced.

Still, Hart said, eyes are opening to the potential. “I always get the same reaction when I go to the Pentagon to brief someone on this stuff. I do a demonstration, you see the jaws drop, and then they say: ‘Show me that again.’ ”

Someday, perhaps, they will show him the money.