US Military Deploys Personal Gunshot Detectors

RedEaredSlider writes "A new warfighting technology will soon be making its way to Afghanistan. US Army forces will be getting gunshot detection systems, which can tell where a shot was fired from. Approximately 13,000 gunshot detection systems will be given to individual footsoldiers later this month, according to the US Army. The system, called Individual Gunshot Detector, has four small acoustic sensors and a small display screen attached to the soldier's body armor that shows the distance and direction of incoming bullets. The sensors are each about the size of a deck of cards and can detect the supersonic sound waves generated by enemy gunfire. It alerts the soldier of the shot's direction in less than one second."

Comments

13,000 gunshot detection systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

13,000 gunshot detection systems will be given to individual footsoldiers...

Oh give me a break! How is each soldier going to carry 13,000 gunshot detection systems? Isn't one enough?

Re:13,000 gunshot detection systems?

[microbee]

I think you misunderstood. Get a clue, there is only one detector!

What the system does is that it detects if someone fires 13,000 gunshots at you.

fireworks

[memnock]

Would they foil this? They're loud. But don't move at the speed of sound.

Re:fireworks

[c6gunner]

I imagine the primary use of this is that, if bullets start flying and you take cover, you will be able to figure out where to return fire (or send backup, etc.) without needing to pop your head out first.

That's more or less right. If the bullets are flying in large quantities it's generally not hard to figure out where they're coming from, but if you've got one or two snipers taking potshots at your platoon, it can be quite difficult to find them. In those cases, the traditional method for locating the shooter involves the section/squad commander yelling "charlie team, take a bound!". This seems much safer.

"supersonic sound waves"

[snookerhog]

if it is really detecting supersonic sound waves, it needs to be re-calibrated methinks...

Re:"supersonic sound waves"

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh!

(which is sonic)

((if it were supersonic, it wouldn't be sound))

Genius in Marketing.

[geekmux]

"...The system, called Individual Gunshot Detector...

Really? All kinds of kick-ass program names and acronyms in the Military's arsenal of weapon nomenclature, and the best you could do was..."Individual Gunshot Detector"? Sheesh.

I guess there is one benefit to that generic name...I'll reserve the right to slap the shit out of anyone that asks the question "what does it do?"

Re:Genius in Marketing.

[GameboyRMH]

4-directional Sonic Input Gunshot Heading Triangulator

4SIGHT

It's a sad day when the military can't come up with a good backronym.

If it works, great

[sarbonn]

If this saves any lives, then I'm all for it. I just hope it's not another makeshift technology that some company designed to make money but doesn't actually do anything useful but make rich people richer at the expense of American soldiers.

Re:If it works, great

[royallthefourth]

If this saves any lives, then I'm all for it.

It's certain this won't save the lives of any Afghans or Iraqis, whether the bullets are coming from a helicopter a mile away or a soldier that just kicked in his front door.

Re:If it works, great

[demonbug]

If this saves any lives, then I'm all for it.

It's certain this won't save the lives of any Afghans or Iraqis, whether the bullets are coming from a helicopter a mile away or a soldier that just kicked in his front door.

It might, actually. If the American soldiers are better able to determine where they are being shot at from, there is less likelihood of them shooting back at the wrong place. It should, to some extent, reduce "collateral damage".

Of course, I have my doubts about the usefulness in an urban environment (where it would have the most positive effect for reducing collateral damage), where I would think the complicated environment (lots of echoes) would confuse such a device. Maybe they get around that by concentrating on these wondrous sound waves that move faster than the speed of sound.

Not Much Help Against the First Shot

[men0s]

If a sniper has a clear shot and takes a person out, well, that target will be dead before the sound waves reach the device. But at least the rest of the squad would know where the shot came from and respond accordingly.

Re:Not Much Help Against the First Shot

[Wyatt Earp]

Which is the point, right now without gunshot senors the unit is pinned down trying to determine the location of the sniper.

They've been using them in police and military applications for over ten years.

And yea, fireworks don't spoof them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator

Re:Not Much Help Against the First Shot

[Wyatt Earp]

Thats why most police departments have more than one police station and more than one cop car.

Even during the North LA bank robbery, not every cop in the LAPD was dispatched there.

For your example - guys on the East Side fire off a bunch of rounds, car(s) are dispatched for shots fired calls, they don't see bloody corpses in the streets, they call it back in as responded too and go on to the next call.

West End of town, alarms go off and the police over there still respond.

just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

What about subsonic rounds? subsonic rounds + silencer = near invisible sniper.

Re:Truth copies fiction

[GameboyRMH]

I immediately thought of the "red glow of pain" that most modern FPSes have to help you figure out where you're being shot from.

Re:I always thought "ouch!"

[DikSeaCup]

Do a little reading - you might be surprised at how often people get shot and don't realize it right away.

LOL he's right

[GameboyRMH]

Sup dawg, I heard you like gunshot detectors, so I put 12,999 gunshot detectors in your gunshot detector so you can detect shots while you detect shots while you detect shots while you detect shots whi [FIELD TRUNCATED]

I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

With experience, one can not only learn to distinguish gunfire from vaguely gunfire-like sounds (fireworks, backfiring cars and so forth), but get a pretty good approximation of the type of weapon being fired - sometimes even down to specific models. If a human ear can learn to make such fine distinctions then surely a purpose-built sensor can do at least as well.

Re:I doubt it

[NoSleepDemon]

Not necessarily, there are entire fields dedicated to creating sound analysis systems that don't even come close to the human ear - brain counterpart. For example, detecting beats in music, or recognizing syllables in speech.

Re:I doubt it

[X0563511]

It doesn't need to open. See, there's this miraculous property called sound transduction. Vibrations on one side of a membrane or other surface can, if the materials are correct, transduce to the other side.

Re:I doubt it

[Anonymous Coward]

Admittedly I'm no expert, but the examples you give are ones where the meaning of the sound is context-sensitive, and the majority of the "thinking" is dedicated to parsing that context in order to figure out how to assign meaning to the sound.

A weapon report, on the other hand, is self-contained (for lack of a better term). It doesn't have to be compared to the sounds that precede and follow it, at least not for the purposes of telling where it came from and whether it really is from gunfire.

So while I could certainly be wrong, I don't think the problems you describe apply here.

I am curious about how it would handle echo-prone locations like mountains giving it trouble, though.

Its called a SWATS detector.

[netrangerrr]

Its called the Soldier Wearable Acoustic Targeting System (SWATS) - and as a former Army Ranger (and a current QinetiQ employee) - I can tell you its a very cool and useful item. Bullets can whiz by you without you knowing where they came from. This little device at least gives you an estimate based on the sonic shockwave and gives you a heads up as to where a shooter might be. Not super high-tech, but super-useful if you're being shot at.

Re:Truth copies fiction

[mdarksbane]

Heck, try Marathon, back in 1993.

Games have all kinds of different rules for this sort of radar. I'm personally a fan of ones that require at least motion or sound to be able to function, instead of pretending that it's tracking every commando's cell phone or something.

Or

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

4way Sonic Kinetic Inference Notifier

Re:Or

[EnsilZah]

Does this mean Jewish privates will not be issued one?

Re:Truth copies fiction

[jgtg32a]

Amusingly enough, in the game STALKER it was tracking everyone's PDA

Re:These Do Not Work

[blair1q]

Did your ears work better than these did? Canyons are probably where these would be most needed, if they could discriminate on amplitude. Just tell me where the loudest one is, because he's likely the closest. Of course, parabolic ruts in the canyon walls could be trouble there...