[Icelander]

Does anyone have a feel for how plentiful issue binoculars are in the modern US military?

Or with the federal agencies under Homeland Security tasked with border control around El Paso?

The PCs were equipped at Ft. Bliss before the current adventure. They were issued some stuff that the Onyx Rain task force had access to, apparently mostly from the stores of agencies under Homeland, but evidently there were some means to borrow US Army equipment from the base if there was a vital need, as they got Christini special operation bikes with a good Administration roll.

And then the PCs got discretionary funds with which they were expected to buy most of their gear. I'm finalising it, but haven't put down what model of binoculars they got. And it's not like the budget will stretch to buying high-end models, as it's mostly allocated already.

I'm wondering if the PCs could have used Scrounging, Savoir-Faire (Military or Police) and/or Administration to creatively acquire some M22 and M24 binoculars without having to pay for them (they do hope to bring them back in like a week). Or at least Fast-Talk, Merchant and possibly Sex Appeal to get a sweetheart deal on surplus glasses that still work fine.

I've read that there used to be so few of the Steiner 7x50 M22 available per unit, and so many bureaucratic headaches associated with taking them out of storage and putting them into the hands of troops who might damage them, that it was very common for officers and even enlisted men to buy their own commercial brand binoculars, as getting their hands on Steiners when needed was basically impossible.

That was in the peacetime Army, though. I'm hoping that the M22 and the smaller M24 are much more widely available in 2017, after years of wartime experience where soldiers actually getting some use out their equipment hopefully mattered more than supply clerks being able to account for all of it at all times.

The Steiners started to be phased out in 1991, but I don't know of there are still some of them around or not. I know that BORTAC and other law enforcement bodies that now fall under Homeland had a bunch of surplus Steiners in 2001-2004, which argues that Onyx Rain could dig up a lot of these older models from storage. Of course, 30+ year old binoculars which have been used by both soldiers and cops might not always be in perfect condition and performance might be reduced due to dirty lenses, damage, etc.

The new M22 (which I've seen referred to as M22B, but am not sure whether that's correctly the binocular or the ARD filter which was made by Tenebraex) was made by Fujinon (distriburd, at least initially, through Kama-Tech) and as far as I know, those are still the standard issue. Does that mean that none of them will be available as surplus? And are they plentiful and easy to borrow for a week or too few and hard to get?

The M24 started to be issued around 2002. They seem to have been made by Fujinon too and sold to the military through Northrop Grumman, though it's possible other contractors filled some orders. The Weems & Plath 7x28 Apache is apparently made to M24 specs and fairly popular with soldiers, but I don't know if they were ever issued or these are all private purchases.

What binoculars would it be most plausible for the PCs to acquire at Ft. Bliss as loaners, surplus or otherwise at nominal expense? Assuming that they tried both officially requesting some through Onyx Rain from Homeland agency inventory and less officially tried to get some through the time-tested NCO friend-of-a-friend network (the PC team lead is a federal Special Agent who retired from the Army as an E-6 just over a decade ago).