DIY Ordnance Disposal With An RC Truck

kpw10 writes "My company, Tackle Design, put together a do it yourself ordnance disposal robot for use by one of the partners in our company, currently serving in Iraq. It is a very simple solution costing only about $1,000, but it performs the same functions as the super-expensive robots issued by the military. We looking to see if we can get more of these devices over there - particularly as the treat of IEDs seems to be on the rise. We're also looking into including more advanced cameras and other types of sensors including explosives detectors (MEMS and SAW based) as well as RF detectors."

Comments

Re:Rado and explosives....

[Detritus]

In peacetime you can call the EOD detachment and wait for them to come and deal with the device. During a war, you may not have that luxury. You deal with the situation as best you can, given the available resources.

A control and telemetry RF link is unlikely to cause an accidental detonation if the power is kept reasonably low.

What I would like would be a disposable RC car and hand grenade that could be driven next to the device and detonated, to either disrupt the device or detonate it in place.

History of wartime hacks

[hussar]

A number of the posters here have referred to the long design, test and deployment cycle in the military, and in very many cases, their comments are accurate. But, there is a history of wartime hacks thought up by soldiers or people who knew soldiers. A good example from the WWI was the trench periscope. During WWII, Sgt. Curtis Culin welded pieces of steel cannibalized from German beach defenses to make the "Rhino", a tank capable of cutting through the high bushy walls that lined the roads in Normandy. Today, US Reservists and National Guardsmen are figuring out ways of mounting steel plates as armor on their HUMMVs. That soldiers and marines are coming up with field expedient devices external to the Department of Defense R&D system is nothing new. Some of the hacks get incorporated into actual milspec equipment; some doesn't. The DoD has whole organizations dedicated to cataloging and studying these things as "lessons-learned". It will be interesting to see if this idea gets picked up and widely applied in Iraq.