Former Blackhawk pilot here. I’ll try to describe it for you. Imagine you are looking at the world through toilet paper tubes, and everything is just different shades of green and black, with stars and ground lights hard to differentiate and aircraft lights that look the same as those. Then you have 3 different radio frequencies going off in your ears. Then you’re trying to navigate without any peripheral vision. And you’re trying to keep the aircraft under control. And you are trying to keep watch for all traffic, not just one plane. Because there are several in the sky at once and you’re tying to mentally keep track of all of them. And you get distracted for like 5 seconds or your focus goes elsewhere, like you instructor pilot asking you a question about airspace regulations. Boom. You’re all dead. Flying these machines is really tough, and the airspace and NVGs make it a heck of a lot tougher.
