Editing Image intensifier (section)

===Generation 4===
In 1998, the US company Litton developed the filmless image tube. These tubes were originally made for the Omni V contract and resulted in significant interest by the US military. However, the tubes suffered greatly from fragility during testing and, by 2002, the [[United States Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center|NVESD]] revoked the fourth generation designation for filmless tubes, at which time they simply became known as Gen III Filmless. These tubes are still produced for specialist uses, such as aviation and special operations; however, they are not used for weapon-mounted purposes. To overcome the ion-poisoning problems, they improved scrubbing techniques during manufacture of the MCP ( the primary source of positive ions in a wafer tube ) and implemented autogating, discovering that a sufficient period of autogating would cause positive ions to be ejected from the photocathode before they could cause photocathode poisoning.

Generation III Filmless technology is still in production and use today, but officially, there is no Generation 4 of image intensifiers.