What's Next in National Security?

[Conservative Wife & Mom]

Your Own Personal Sniper Detector | Danger Room | Wired.com

(Read also - Hightech Gear for the Dismounted Warfighter.)

Your Own Personal Sniper Detector
By Noah Shachtman
November 5, 2007 9:20 am

The Pentagon wants $1.4 billion for sniper-fighting gear — including a whole bunch of next-generation shooter-detectors.

The current crop of gunshot locators are attached to Humvees , or to light poles. New models could be small enough to carry around in a pocket, and powerful enough to fit onto a spy drone.

One candidate, according to Defense News - Breaking International Defense News, is the Ears 100, one of several acoustic sensors that "detects the sound of a gunshot, the shock wave of a bullet and the blast from the muzzle, then runs the data through two computers to pinpoint the shooter’s position."

But the Ears 100 is small. It "comes in a 6-inch, 5-pound variant for vehicles, a 1-pound version that clips onto a soldier’s uniform and a 5-pound ground-mounted version." There’s also a "2.2-pound personal-data-assistant-sized version" in the works.

The Pentagon is also looking at putting sniper detectors in the sky.

In February, the Army finalized a $20 million deal to equip some UAVs with Radiance Technologies’ WeaponWatch - Detecting and Responding to Enemy Weapon Fire at the Speed of Light, allowing them to locate the source of incoming rockets, rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and small-arms fire.

First deployed in 2004, five are in Iraq and five in Afghanistan, with five more on the way…

To date, the system has had very successful airborne tests on UH-60 Black Hawk, UH-1 Huey, C-21 and the Boeing unmanned Little Bird.

The 27-pound, less-than-1-cubic-foot WeaponWatch carries an infrared sensor to pick up the heat from a launch tube or gun.

“We have a unique system that is able to measure this and tell the class of weapon, from a .50-caliber machine gun to small-arms fire to an RPG,” Clark said.

The system can detect and classify the weapon from farther than the range of the round, he said. The sensor sends its information to a small laptop display that points to the shooter’s location.

WeaponWatch is part of a larger Army R&D program into sniper-detection, called OverWatch. Here’s a video overview: YouTube - Sniper Detector Demo!

[CathyInBlue]

When I get my back-woods piece of heaven, I want to set up microphones all over the exterior of my roof line, some pointing up, some pointing down. I'll also have a few wireless sensor nodes out there in the woods. I have entirely enough technical prowess to do this.

The fun part will be in outfitting a tracked robotic platform with fire crackers and an electric match to go off all around the homestead and set off those lovely little shock-wave forming devices and then seeing what the shock-waves look like to the computers to which the microphones are hooked up and relative to the locations where the firecrackers are set off, in what order do the microphones pick up the attendant shock-waves?

A bunch of number crunching later, and a deer can't fart in the woods without the location of its rectum showing up on a 3-D map on a computer screen in my home. It won't cost me $1.4 billion either.

It's called a phased array microphone, and there's one in every classroom at the university for keying in on individual speakers when there's a telecast lecture of demonstration.

[Ektarr]

When I get my back-woods piece of heaven...

Upstate South Carolina's nice...

[CathyInBlue]

Upstate South Carolina's nice...

Can I get 3-4+ dozen acres for <$2500/acre?

I'm partial to southern Indiana hill country.