Posted on 07/20/2002 4:10:03 PM PDT by knighthawk
WASHINGTON: Israeli marksmen and counter-terror squads deployed along the Palestinian areas of the West Bank are field-testing a new anti-sniper system designed for the early detection of enemy snipers, media reports said.
The anti-sniper system, Believer is completing the developmental testing under actual urban warfare conditions and awaits approval for the full rate production, Defence News Weekly quoted Israeli officials as saying.
The system that costs around 2 million dollars per copy, can detect the enemy sniper within one-third of a second tracing the bullet path and it either return fire automatically or reveal the exact sniper location to the tactical field commanders.
But I don't see how it can tell one curved lens from another: scope or eyeglass.
It works. The technology is referred to as fire finder. A fire finder can detect and return fire to the point of origin from the incomming round in less than a second. It was first developed in the 1980's. I am sure thay have numerous improvments since them.
It works. The technology is referred to as fire finder. A fire finder can detect and return fire to the point of origin from the incomming round in less than a second. It was first developed in the 1980's. I am sure thay have numerous improvments since them.
Indeed, I think the main trick to this whole deal is exactly picking out the data only from a single shot, from a cacphony of noises to be expected in any actual battle. But if you actually had a simple problem--a single gun firing a single shot--you would still need information from no less than two microphones just as your brain can only estimate the direction of a source of sound if you have two ears.I'm confident that directional information from a reasonably compact microphone will not be extremely accurate directionally. You've seen directional microphones made with large parabolic reflectors, used to eavesdrop on football huddles from the sideline. It's true that such a microphone would discriminate fairly well directionally, down to maybe 10 degrees or so perhaps. But then, the loudness of the report and the sound of the (hopefully missing) bullet's flight when detected doesn't tell you a whole lot about the direction unless you can tweak the direction and listen to another report.
If on the other hand you had two microphones spaced some distance apart laterally, then you can infer something about direction from the difference in time of arrival of the report at the two locations. If there is none that implies that the shot came from somewhere on the plane which is the perpendicular bisecter of the line between the two microphones; otherwise there will be a more complicated surface on which the source must lie. If you add in the time of arrival at each microphone of the snap due to the shock wave off the supersonic bullet, that could suggest how far the bullet missed by, and if you guess the speed of the bullet that could give you an idea of range to the source of the shot.
But I think to have any hope of a definitive solution for the location of the shooter, say nothing of the trajectory of the shot, you must have three microphones or probably more.
And I would assume that the reason they derive the trajectory of the shot is just for show; you are much more concerned about where the next shot might go than about where the last one went in detail. If you know accurately where the shooter is and can communicate with artillery you might prevent the next shot altogether. Not sporting but then, that's pretty much the point of military technology.
During World War II Moshe Dayan served in the British army and was part of a Jewish advance unit sent to prevent the Vichy French from blowing up the bridges between Lebanon and Palestine, thus providing time for the British main force to take the offensive. It was during that campaign that he lost one eye; he was looking through binoculars when a bullet ricocheted off them.
This is the laser based system if I am not mistaken. In other words, it sounds like they can characterize the signatures of different types of returns and put those in a database.
A specific return signal would be matched against the database to try to determine the source. If that particular signature was flagged for an alarm, the user would be notified. That means it would be able to eliminate things like window glass.
If the engineers decide what to flag for alarms and what not to, it will be a relatively simple system to operate, but not as robust. If the user does the flagging, the system would be much more useful, but harder to set up and maintain.
Although the two systems could possibly be used in conjunction as you suggest, it sounds like they are just two competing technologies for the same type of job from the descriptions.
Ruck
That's been around for a long while, and it's called "counterbattery radar." The view isn't the old round radar scope; instead, a bright light highlights the map grid from whence the round came. Mortars pose their own unique problems, but the principle's the same.
Incidentally, we even have man-portable jammers to defeat proximity fuses (they make the round detonate early).
As the tech gets better, the simple rifleman may be left in the dust as "robo soldier" with his superman visor is able to "see" folks out past 1000 yards and hit them easliy with his 25 mm exploding proximity round etc.
And for sure, the goobermint ain't going to be passing that stuff out to civilians.
Ping
That's the AN/TPQ-36 and -37 *firefinder* counterbattery radars. They work.
They can pick up fired mortar rounds in flight, send out targeting data to a field artillery Fire Direction Control center, and have rounds fired and on the way before the mortar shells land.
The original versions with which I worked were based in 2½-ton trucks; the current systems can be moved by a standard HUMVEE. They're getting there. The Marines had one atop the barracks in Lebanon that was destroyed by the truck bomb, I believe, set up to coordinate naval gunfire in response to mortar or recon attacks against the Marine barracks...and so instead, the terrorists resorted to a truck bomb for their attack. *Firefinder*.
Thanks for the laugh.
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