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Listening Robot Senses Snipers
Dr. Eggman writes "Popular Science has a brief piece on the RedOwl, a brainy-looking flightless robot that can 'read a nametag from across a football field and identify the make and model of a rifle fired a mile away simply by analyzing the sound of the distant blast.' For a paltry $150,000, the machine utilizes robotic hearing technology originally developed by Boston University's Photonics Center to improve hearing aids to sense a shot fired and pinpoint its source, identify it as a hostile or friendly weapon, and illuminate the target with a laser visible only with night vision. The RedOwl, built on an iRobot packbot platform and controlled via a modified Xbox videogame controller, can figure out the location of a target 3,000 feet away, allowing troops to call in a precision air strike."
is called Biomimetic Systems. It was the result of the thesis work by a former BU grad student Socrates Deligeorges. I have seen the robot in action and it is pretty awesome!
Except you lose a lot of muzzle velocity by adding a silencer..
differentiating the make and model of a rifle fired a mile away simply by analyzing the sound of the distant blast. Sorry, bzzzt, no. There is NO way to distinguish one, let's say, 22 Long Rifle muzzle blast signature from another, reliably. You can't pretend to tell me that muzzle crowning of one model vs the other can be that specific. Location, yeah, OK, maybe, triangulation and all that. Sound signature based on make and model? Bullshiat. There's about 4 different muzzle crown profiles used, and the sound signature is going to vary a hell of a lot more by brand and type of ammo, than shape and "make and model" of the firearm.
If the soldiers are continuously broadcasting sound and relative position data to a base station, then they may as well paint themselves fluorescent orange and do jumping jacks.
That's why the military developed spread-spectrum radio communications. A radio set converted sound waves into a rapid series of short pulses that jumped from frequency to frequency using a random pattern. The idea was that it would be impossible to triangulate the location of a transmitted because any single pulse would only appear as background noise. This evolved into
mobile phone systems.
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Why would you call in a precision air strike for a lonely sniper?
It doesn't need to be an air strike. Lots of rocket propelled grenades can lock onto a laser designated target.
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Short Answer: Actually, you are incorrect. Our armor is designed to take multiple hits from 7.62-mm ammunition.
Long answer: What the hell are you talking about? This isn't Desert Storm, this is 2007, baby. Check out the Interceptor Body Armor, which has been standard issue for all troops being deployed for a while now.
There are parts of the Interceptor Body Armor that are made of only Kevlar for its flexible properties, such as the groin protector that is hanging off the body armor in the picture. However, as the op says correctly, the thin Kevlar is not designed to take anything more than 9-mm rounds, ideally. The actual parts designed to accept 7.62-mm rounds, "stop plates" as some call them, cover the entire from torso from collarbone to belt buckle, front and back. They are made from some rather advanced ceramics. Nowadays, they even issue armor for your sides and your shoulders, two common places some people get shot and end up dying.
We also wear helmets. In the Army, they're commonly referred to simply as "Kevlars" (Typical example: "Uniform for the EST will be IBA with your kevlar, no LCE." Translation: That means you're going to the computer-simulated firing range with your Interceptor Body Armor and your helmet, but you're not bringing your 'pistol belt' or the canteens and ammo pouches that are typically attached to the pistol belt. The army loves acronyms). Anyway, there are true stories of kevlars taking 7.62 rounds and surviving, but even the helmet made out of kevlar molded to a hard, shaped shell is only designed to accept 9-mm rounds.
And thusly return us to the original short answer, that is: Troops in Iraq wear body armor that takes multiple 7.62-mm rounds. Stay classy, San Di-Slashdot.
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The four microphones would be in a known fixed position. Knowing that sound travels at 344 meters/sec, not all the microphones will pick up the sound at the same instant. There will be millisecond differences between the microsphones as the sound passes over the array. You can then use software to phase correlate the sound impulses and get a very accurate triangulation of the direction it came from. Putting microphones on individual troops who move around will destroy the ability to measure the delays - you don't know exactly how far apart the microphones are and therefore don't know what the standard delay time is.
Most of the stuff on
Not really.. The real problem is that it's much more effective to use subsonic ammunition with a suppressor, otherwise there's that whole "sonic boom" thing to contend with. Subsonic ammunition doesn't have a very flat trajectory, and is more susceptible to wind (simply because it spends more time in the air over a given distance) which makes it almost useless for sniping.
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According to my brother, who just got out of Iraq on his second tour, their ROI have been updated to basically say that if someone is shooting at them they can engage. Previously they had to escalate and get someone who isn't even in the field to okay any engagement.
They 1 - hide, very very good, so even if you lasertag the area, you'll have difficulty finding him and 2 - a smart sniper doesn't stay in the same location popping 10-ths of bullets in people's brains. Snipers are supposed to be single-shot accurate and have a mission to kill a certain person, whether that be a commander, a guard or whatever it may be, if you want more people dead, you deploy a force with a little bigger firepower. The problem (these days in the military too) is that people have been watching too much high-suspense movies and they're using resources like snipers the same way as well as making 'solutions' to counter Hollywood-style military personnel. I've got family that is in Iraq (he's actually got sniper training) and he can tell you all about the use of 100's of military personnel to guard a small area while other areas are under-stabilized and the misuse of their skills to reflect more 'American' style high-suspense combat fighting against guerilla and other 'insurgents' that can transform from civilians walking around on the marketplace to fighter-with-automatic-rifle in a few seconds.
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Except that the sonic boom caused by bullet is not pinpointable. When the bullet flies supersonic, it's creating those sonic booms the whole way (or until it drops below speed of sound). For example one of my sniper trainers was crazy enough to go downrange when another trainer shot a supersonic round with silencer (both were sufficiently good at their trade to have enough trust) and he said that sound of the shot came from completely different direction from where the shooter was. In my opinion and this is also the opinion of my sniper trainers is that every sniper should use silencer. In addition of removing the bang of the rifle, it also reduces recoil and the puff of dirt caused by the supersonic gasses exiting the muzzle.
.22LR rifles with silencers in close range. Usually in constructed areas and aiming at the gaps of the protective gear.
:). I probably wouldn't shoot anything else, but this robot before exiting the area, because $150,000 is probably the most damage I could make with a single bullet :).
Also almost anyone with some skills can construct a silencer. Simplest designs is that you have several metal disks with hole in the middle which matches the caliber of the bullet and those disks are arranged in line, attached to each other with regular interval and covered with a metal sheet.
The wikipedia article is good one on this, although the silencer design presented is more complex what I presented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressor
And the subsonic rounds are not useless for sniper operations. If I remember correctly, when USSR was in Afganistan, the insurgents used
The ability of the robot to find the range and distance of a shot by the bang of the rifle, is nothing new. I believe that US army has that kind of hardware already in some of their hummers. It is also possible to know the direction of a shot by only the flight sound of the bullet, but that requires several 'listening posts' and a central computer to calculate, but this only gets the direction of the shot, not the distance. And in constructed areas usually calculating correct direction is impossible as the sound bounces from the walls. I don't know if this robot can still pinpoint the direction and distance from the bang of the rifle, if there is walls offering echos etc, but atleast human ear is fooled about the direction. There is also equipment that tries to find the bullet inflight with radar etc, but my understanding those are not yet in use because they are not very reliable.
I think that this robot is the number one target for snipers. Shoot it first and then you're home free unless there is a second one
Thermal imaging for finding snipers is not new also, and usually the military uniforms are made so that they present as low thermal image as possible. Snipers can be invisible in thermal image also as to naked eye. I don't think that the Iraq insurgents have enough training for that, but probably they will adapt if this robot is introduced in Iraq. Although I cannot imagine why US troops in Iraq haven't used thermal imaging or bullet radars (as I've learned to call them) before..
PS. My background in this is that I have completed basic sniper training from Finnish defence forces and I have read several respected books on the subject.
Typical sniper doctrine in urban areas is to layup far back from the window threshold and also camouflage themselves against the background I.E. appropriately coloured blankets. The developers would have no doubt studied sniper doctrines from various forces around the world and would have accounted for this issue.
And no, I couldn't give a shit what my karma is.
All the major vendors of US suppressors have contracts with the US military (Advanced Armament, OPS Inc, Knights, Gemtech, etc.)
Advanced Armament have several suppressors designed for military contracts that are for sniper-type rifles (TITAN
Using a suppressor on a sniper rifle is of great use.
1. It eliminates the muzzle noise making it more difficult for the enemy to pin point the shooter (the sonic crack from a bullet goes in all directions at once and follows the bullet until it goes subsonic.)
2. It eliminates the muzzle flash, so no visual indicator that a round has been fired
3. It eliminates the gas kicking up dirt from the shooters position, so no visual indicator that a round has been fired
4. It reduces felt recoil, making shooting faster and easier (Thereby more accurate follow up shots if needed)
5. It drops the noise to the shooter down to hearing safe levels.
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