From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue May 14 2002 - 06:22:53 MDT
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spudboy100@aol.com has sent you an article from The
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RAPID-FIRE METAL STORM TECHNOLOGY USURPS CRUSADER
Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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A new type of ballistic technology that can fire more than 1
million rounds per minute from a 36-barrel weapon is one of
the reasons Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has
canceled the $11 billion Crusader artillery system.
The technology is known as "Metal Storm," which is also the
name of the Australian research and development company that
owns it.
The fastest weapons today are mechanical Gatling guns that
can fire at a rate of some 6,000 rounds per minute. Infantry
rifles average 600 rounds per minute, which is the firing
rate for a magazine of 15 to 30 rounds.
The chairman of the board of Metal Storm is retired Adm.
Bill Owens, a former deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and author of "Lifting the Fog of War," a book about
defense modernization.
With multimillion-dollar contracts, Metal Storm works
closely with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency and the Australian Defense Science and Technology
Organization. The company's new chief corporate officer is
Chuck Vehlow, a former general manager of the Boeing
Helicopter Division. Mr. Vehlow, who has a master of science
degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has
negotiated big-ticket procurement contracts and
technology-licensing agreements with the Pentagon.
Most of Metal Storm's work is top-secret. Under development
are systems that include an unmanned aerial combat vehicle
that will carry twelve 40 mm mortar boxes comprising a total
of 1,200 tubes, and armed with 7,200 grenades. The system's
unprecedented firing capabilities can lay down a continuous
50-yard-wide carpet of grenades for two miles, firing all
its grenades simultaneously with 5-yard separation on
impact.
Another gun under development for a small combat aerial
vehicle is multibarreled and can fire 270 rounds onto a
target in 0.001 seconds without stress on the airframe or
any drop in air speed.
The company's Advanced Individual Combat Weapon program,
says Chief Executive Officer Mike O'Dwyer, is destined to
replace small arms among Western allies. The prototypes
under development have a dual-barrel capability to fire both
20 mm and 40 mm bursting munitions and standard 5.56-mm NATO
ammunition. The weapon also will fire nonlethal projectiles
for riot control. The future infantry weapons hardware
replacement program for Australia's small defense forces
alone is estimated to be worth $700 million.
Metal Storm's submachine gun will be capable of firing
multiple-barrel, rapid-fire bursts at 45,000 rounds per
minute per barrel. The technology is entirely electronic and
nonmechanical. Its electronically variable rate of fire has
been confirmed to 1 million rounds per minute.
The technology allows barrels to be grouped in any
configuration required for a particular application because
it has no moving parts, other than bullets or other
projectiles. It also has no separate magazine and no
ammunition feed or ejection system. Next to Metal Storm's
firepower, said a senior Pentagon acquisition official, the
lumbering, 45-ton Crusader artillery tube would be obsolete.
At the core of the technology is a projectile design that
enables multiple high-pressure ammunition to be stacked in a
barrel, and then electronically fired in sequence. In turn,
multiple barrels can be grouped to form compact weapons
systems of unprecedented conventional firepower.
These new weapons will have all-electronic access control
systems to ensure that only authorized personnel use them.
The dual function will allow on-board selection at the press
of a button between a nonlethal response capability and the
kind of lethality that will deny an area to the enemy
without having to use anti-personnel land mines.
Vle is a handgun with a 64-digit electronic keying system
that conceals a transponder. An electronic message confirms
when the weapon is set to fire and which fire setting is
selected. Pentagon specialists have witnessed tests in which
the Vle has fired single shots, double-tap shots at 45,000
rpm, triples at 60,000 rpm, and a high-energy double-tap
burst at 500,000 rpm.
Sources at the advanced research project agency said the
Metal Storm technological breakthrough will produce a new
generation of weapons that will "accelerate
out-of-atmosphere ballistic missile interdiction as well as
biological and chemical cloud neutralization."
• <I>Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The
Washington Times, as well as an editor at large of United
Press International. His account also appears on the UPI
wire.</I>
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