New toys for the troops

Well, I whined about our readiness – actually, the lack of which – to defend against things like relatively low-altitude drones. Did we magically find something viable? No, but it turns out that some new toys are in the works which can address some of our lacks.

First up – everyone knows one of the basic laws: that tracers work both ways (Mur[hy’s Laws of Combat #27, if you are keeping count.). If you can see the path of a tracer going out, anyone can see its path – which points to where the gunner is. Not good, especially when different militaries use different colored phosphor compounds . “Gee, sarge, see the green tracers coming from right there? What should we do about it?”  (I learned something new, that the Brits originated tracers in .303 ammo in 1915. Now we know.)    Wiki

There are three types of tracers: bright tracer, subdued tracer, and dim tracer. Bright tracers are the standard type, which starts burning very shortly after exiting the muzzle.  Bright tracers can also overwhelm night-vision devices, rendering them useless. Subdued tracers burn at full brightness after a hundred or more yards to avoid giving away the gunner’s position. Dim tracers burn very dimly but are clearly visible through night-vision equipment.

The Army has been working on one-sided visible tracers (One Way Luminescent – OWL) since at least 2014 per the Washington Post WaPo, and still is per Defense News. They have added the new 6.8 ammo to the project, now, as well.

Blooper fan? Don’t feel left out, they are also developing timed and proximity-fuzed rounds for grenade launchers.

Additionally, the service is testing proximity fuses for grenade launcher rounds that would help defeat enemies behind barriers and blast drones out of the sky.

Technically, proximity fuzing is for when a round gets near to the desired target, like a naval mine that detects a large metallic mass and goes BOOM. Timed bursts are a bit stupider, and are more like the old AAA rounds which were fuzed to detonate at (hopefully the specific) altitude an aircraft was at, putting ugly holes in said aircraft. The rounds they are firing at barricades are more like “a) how far away is the target? b) how long does this round take to reach that?  c) the internal fuze is set to go off flight time plus a smidge to blow up and rain shrapnel on whoever is behind said obstacle. The Germans used such fuzing to great effect shelling forests with air bursts within the trees, showering the folks below with high-speed chunks of wood .

Col. Steven Power, project manager of maneuver ammunition systems for the Army’s Joint Program Executive Office Armaments and Ammunition, said his office is developing airburst options and proximity sensing in a selection of rounds between the 20mm and 40mm range.

The round development gives soldiers in both air defense units and other types of units ways to knock out aerial drones with the tools they have on hand. For instance, the airburst option for 30mm rounds is key to the Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system the Army is deploying to protect various units.

We are going to see drones used against us, on the high side from UAVs down to small hobbyist drones that can go bang.

Nice to see someone doing something about it sooner rather than later. Hope if the SHTF we have enough to do some good.

BTW, one of the options mentioned was laser weapons for drones.

The service is finding ways to jam and disrupt signals — even looking at lasers to melt a drone’s guts to drop it out of the sky. But there’s nothing quite like steel or lead striking a target.Defense News

For fun, try looking at the amount of energy a laser can deliver… it can be like detonating a stick of dynamite on the target. Energy to feed the laser and recharging time are our big limiters. Keep your eyes on this, though – when we can run enough energy into a laser and recharge it quickly enough,  that will change the battlefield forever. JMHO.

H/t to Jeff for this one.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, Science and Technology