US Military Deploys Personal Gunshot Detectors 257
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."
Re:Not Much Help Against the First Shot (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Re:I believe they mean sonic booms (Score:2, Informative)
If that's the case, it could be foiled by something like a VSS Vintorez, which fires a 9x39mm subsonic round. The round was originally designed to remain subsonic to assist in suppression, but this could make the caliber more advantageous than it already was.
I wonder if these types of Soviet weapons are available in Iraq in quantity? Surely they are in Afghanistan, though ammunition in the oddball caliber might be hard to come by.
I doubt it (Score:3, Informative)
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.