[MadMax]

I like Olight flashlights a lot. Good value with many Ebay retailers. Powerful Cree emitters and handy accessories like wired remotes and tailcaps with side buttons. Many models also offer low intensity modes (15lm) that are selectable by turning the bezel a few times to put the light into that mode.

I find that the strobe mode doesn't degrade my night vision nearly as much as extended activation. As sexy as NVG is, at close quarters in a CQC situation I'd take a strobe 320lm Olight over a real PVS. Once the fight opens up in close quarters, the peripheral view limitations of PVS become a penalty and being able to blind opfor becomes a strong advantage. Two or three strobes is plenty enough to establish the distribution of obstacles and opfor in a room.

Outdoors the situation is a fair bit different. Turning on a lamp completely reveals your position and calls in the opfor. Most lights don't have enough throw to stun at longer outdoor ranges so their combat effectiveness is rather mitigated.

Lights are still a valuable tool in certain situations. You might be annoyed when your teammates use them indiscriminately, but you pretty much have to suck up your whining about natural night vision if opfor fields it against you effectively. In situations where there is a little ambient light, I sometimes blast a light down a corridor or into a room while closing my eyes. Turn off the light end enter and opfor's natural night vision is toast, but I can still see them in the dark.

Someday when I'm bored at work with nothing to do, I want to glue together a couple dozen 300lm emitters pointing in all directions around a circuit board and a battery. Set up the circuit to flash a strobe pattern after receiving an impact so I can huck my photonic detonator around the corner into a room I have to clear. I'd take the front plate off my auto darkening welding helmet and stick it on my goggles so I can come around the corner with a faceplate that automatically dims to mitigate the omni strobe so I can strike Neo poses while I shoot everyone like a scene from Equilibrium.