When you consider the question of tactical needs for light - and what other applications you might have - you need your answer to apply to what I have identified as two distinct groups of tactical light users. The first group is similar but different - law enforcement officers and armed citizens. Both may have a need to use light to identify threats and control people. How? Tactical light can take away an assailant's vision, affecting depth perception and mentally take away any perceived advantage your opponent may have. The other use of tactical light is for military special operations, which is a relatively new area. In the past, if you turned on a white light in a combat situation, your own side would probably have shot you because of the potential for enemy fire that would be directed back toward your position.

However, in today's military conflict, rooting out the enemy is not as simple as it was during, say, World War II when the accepted U.S. Army doctrine for house-clearing was to frag the room with a grenade and then come in blazing. No one left standing.In today's more politically-sensitive wars, you can't just blow up the building. You have to search it. And when you go into a CQB environment where you have to distinguish friend from foe, you need white light too. Everyone dresses the same, rides the same horses, drives the same vehicles, carries the same weapons, and they all live in caves! In this situation we find a new and unique field application for tactical lighting.

SureFire Beginnings
In the law enforcement and civilian world, brighter, stronger beams of light are desirable to illuminate and control. When I initially became a policeman 23 years ago, most of our lights had very little illumination, but they made for great clubs.

In 1980, I saw my first SureFire 6P flashlight and believed that the inventor, John Matthews, had somehow captured the sun and put it in that small capsule. Today, that same 6P that I used, with its 65 lumen output, seems tame. If you have followed the advancements with SureFire over the past 10 years, you have noted models of tactical lights that become more and more powerful, all the way up to The Beast at over 2,000 lumens. The good part is that as Matthews and new product development manager Paul Kim get older, they make even stronger lights - perhaps because they need more illumination to see!As an aside, did you know that for every 10 years that we age, we need four times the light to see what we used to see easily?

Years ago, as a patrol officer I followed my need to use a stronger tactical light and I found the new SureFire 9N Commander from the SureFire line of Advanced Rechargeables to be very convenient. This model has a 20 lumen light for reading and writing police forms and a second lamp of 140 lumens for self-defense and control. From working the graveyard shift for most of my adult life, I initially thought this was The Answer. But finally I realized it was too slow to switch from bulb to bulb for my specific duties. So, about a year and a half ago, I changed to SureFire's tactical rechargeable model, the top of the SureFire line, the 10X Dominator. This was indeed the light I had been waiting for.

Meet The Dominator
This amazing twin-lamp flashlight with a futuristic body design was designed from the ground-up to be the ultimate police flashlight. The Dominator offers the same dual-level of light capability as the 9N Commander, but it's power is much greater. The working light is a strong 60 lumens - the equivalent of the famous 6P Classic - but there is a second lamp that produces over 500 lumens of light! This is like turning on a portable, handheld spotlight! The Dominator operates by pressing a two-stage tailcap, a thumb-operated, momentary pressure switch that is common to all SureFires. Press lightly on the Dominator's two-stage tactical tailcap and you obtain 60 lumens; apply more pressure and out comes a ball of flame with 500 lumens. Also, by twisting the bezel, the working light activates and stays on; rotate the bezel further to turn on a constant beam of 500 lumens. The grip is oblong and fits under my support-side arm trapped against my ribs. Knowing that officers like to tuck their light under their arm, the SureFire engineers intentionally configured the grip in an ellipse and also included non-slip rubber pads. I adjust the bezel so a quarter turn locks the 60 lumen beam on for writing tickets or completing forms, but I can also put this tactical light in my hand to easily get more light, by putting pressure on the rear pressure switch.

A Year On The Streets
For the past 12 months, I have used a 10X Dominator on the job, working patrol on the graveyard shift of a large California beach city. Over the course of the year, I found numerous instances in which I could easily control "passive resisters" (the non-violent offender) before they became violent. How can a strong light be used to gain a tactical advantage? Shining the powerful light beam in the eyes of passive resisters seems to reduce the desire to escalate into violence because of sensory overload. These offenders responded to our commands for being taken into custody, from behind our wall of light. We were able to easily out-maneuver these offenders, take away their balance and maintain control over them with handcuffing techniques and a firm grip. During that time period, I was also able to deal with potentially violent people, all with non-reportable "use of force by intimidation with light." In these cases, the appropriate use of tactical light removed the aggressor's advantage, and provided sensory overload. In the law enforcement community, we have spent much money on less lethal tools, but have overlooked the use of strong illumination to control passive resisters. During our SWAT training, I have found the high intensity light to be valuable in putting out a wall of light. In force-on-force training, the "bad guy" role players could not see what we were doing and were too intimidated to stick their heads out!

Now the tactics we have just discussed are law enforcement and civilian applications. It is the goal of law enforcement to take people in custody or control them with no force or as little force as possible. Sometimes people are so intent on resisting and violently attacking us that we have to use deadly force. Our military sometimes wrongfully gets put into the law enforcement role and must use these tactics. Discussions between SureFire and a group of select individuals, whom we can best describe simply as being "highly experienced people", have indicated the need for less powerful lights, but more durable and with longer battery life. They do not need to control the enemy or take them into custody on a true battlefield. They need to identify a good guy from the enemy and use deadly force. I do not want any of our military injured or killed by being kinder and gentler!

Bill Murphy is a 23-year veteran senior police officer assigned to patrol and SWAT with a major California municipality. He is a Use of Force instructor, Police Academy Firearms instructor, Gunsite rangemaster, SureFire Institute instructor and he owns and operates Firearms Training Associates, a Southern California training center for weapons and tactics. The website address is www.ftatv.com