By Tom Henderson
Small Times Senior Writer
Sept. 6, 2001 — Metal Storm Ltd., an Australian maker of all-electronic firearms, is opening up an office near Washington, D.C., this month to work on U.S.-funded projects for the next generation of military weapons.
Already in the works: a more powerful sniper rifle and a MEMS-powered mortar system to replace land mines.
The company is midway through a three-year,
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| In this artist’s conception, a 64-barrel mortar system would fire its full component of 256 rounds in nine-thousandths of a second. |
The Ottawa Convention produced a ban on anti-personnel land mines in December 1997. As of the end of 2000, 139 nations had signed the treaty, including all members of NATO except the United States and Turkey.
The International Red Cross estimates that 26,000 civilians a year are injured or killed by one of the 110 million land mines now buried in 68 countries around the world. The United States has said it agrees with the treaty in theory, but wants to continue using land mines in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.
In March, the U.S. Army announced the first two of five $2 million contracts exploring alternatives to anti-personnel land mines. Both were awarded to divisions of BAE Systems, a British based defense supplier.
The United States says it will join the ban in 2006 if it can find “suitable alternatives” to land mines, which is where Metal Storm hopes to come in. The United States has a stockpile of 12 million land mines and replacing them would provide lucrative opportunities for defense contractors.
Art Schatz, a former Navy helicopter gunship pilot in Vietnam, is senior vice president of North American operations for Metal Storm Inc, the American subsidiary that is moving into headquartered in Ballston, Va. He said MEMS technology will be at the heart of his company’s land mine replacement system.
“The system will use all kinds of remote and local sensors to warn you of an incursion,” he said. “There will be a sensor field, and you’ll be sitting miles away at your laptop and say, ‘Oops, we have an intruder.’ It’s very closely tied in with advanced sensor systems.”
When an incursion is directed, a small mortar might launch a miniature TV camera into the area, which would come down by parachute. “We can see if it’s a guy walking his camel, or if it’s bad guys. You see how bad the situation is and you determine the lethality needed. Maybe you just fire off a big noise to scare off the guy and his camel.”
Or, send in electronically fired mortar rounds in extremely rapid bursts. In tests conducted by the Australian military, a single barrel prototype was able to fire its four rounds at intervals of three milliseconds, a microburst rate of 20,000 rounds a minute. A 64-barrel mortar system would fire its full component of 256 rounds in nine-thousandths of a second.
“When you want to put a lot of stuff on the target real quick, or if you want to clear out an area so you can send in your troops, this will do it,” Schatz said.
Marion Scott oversees sensor development at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., as deputy director of its Microsystems Science, Technology and Components Center. He also was part of a National Research Council panel that met last year to discuss alternative technologies to anti-personnel land mines.
That panel recommended that “sensor technology should be leveraged immediately to develop sensor systems to improve a soldier’s ability to discriminate among friends, foes and noncombatants in all terrains and all weather conditions.”
Scott said systems that involve a so-called “man in the loop,” such as one that would launch a small TV camera into a particular zone, could be used near-term, but can be fooled. “There are classic ways to fool human beings. If a man with a camel is considered innocent, guess what the enemy is going to look like? A man with a camel.”
He said DARPA is funding RF-MEMS (radio frequency MEMS) sensor technologies that take the man out of the loop, but such refined sensors are years away. He said one type of sensor would have cocklebur-like extrusions, stick to the clothing of anyone walking through a targeted zone, then send back information wirelessly.
Sensors scattered throughout the area could even do DNA analysis of people it comes in contact with, matching them against a list of approved DNA profiles. The sensor could tell you if it was an approved U.S. soldier in the field, for example, but differentiating between a noncombatant and an enemy soldier is a tougher challenge.
Scott said the risk is ending up with a system that still kills people indiscriminately, “and then you’re back to the same problem as land mines.”
Metal Storm Inc. began U.S. operations July 1, and has been operating out of office space at Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), of McLean, Va., a giant defense contractor that also runs NASA’s Web site.
SAIC shares the DARPA contract with Metal Storm, and will provide much of the research and testing as a sniper rifle and other technologies are developed. Metal Storm retains all intellectual property of the research, said Schatz.
SAIC also has the contract to market Metal Storm technology worldwide. The company will market only to police and military customers and not the civilian market, said Schatz.
The company also makes a handgun that can be fitted with four barrels at once, each of which is capable of firing at any time. The advantage to police is that each barrel can be loaded with different projectiles. One barrel could contain pepper-spray cartridges, another could hold rubber bullets, and the other two could hold traditional bullets of varying caliber.
A police officer in a riot situation could use nonlethal projectiles until more force was required, then go to lethal bullets without having to change weapons.
The company also hopes to parlay MEMS-based sensor technology into production of a smart handgun that would only fire in the hands of authorized users.
In July, Metal Storm was one of 12 applicants for a smart-gun grant program being funded by the National Institute of Justice of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Applications will be evaluated in September, according to program manager Wendy Howe of NIJ, with awards to be announced in December.
The company has produced several handgun and rifle prototypes, which have been extensively tested by the Australian military. The guns have no mechanical parts, can have several barrels and are fired electronically.
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CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
Tom Henderson at [email protected] or call 734-528-6292.