Exploring the strategic edge of airburst munitions: Weapon of the Week

So much of modern warfare means having the right tool for the job

And here to talk a little bit more about that is Joe Chan with American Ride Mittal

And Joe, we're talking about airburst munitions today. Talk to me a little bit about this first 40-millimeter airburst that we have

So what we're doing for the Army is to develop a 40-millimeter airburst round

Previously, the way you were engaging targets is the 40-millimeter round will have to hit the target

So it's a point-detonating fuse. It's great for the target sets that it's going after

but it's not so great for target sets where you're trying to engage targets that are behind cover

because you just can't hit them. So what the Army is trying to do is, how do you make this into an airburst round

so that you can explode this above a target where they're hiding

So what the technology that we've provided is, we're programming this fuse to explode at a 3D point in space

by telling it the range which then converts it into a time of flight

And the way that we're doing this is you'll see these little indentations here around the edge of the fuse

that no other of the 40mm rounds have. What those are are LEDs

They're receiving signals as it's launching out of the muzzle from an IR programmer on the barrel of the gun telling this how far to go

And then when it reaches the predetermined time of flight, it goes off

Very highly effective. You bet. So that's what the Army is working on

Like you said, it's for people who are undercover. If you're behind a sand berm or behind a wall or something

your 40-millimeter round standard detonation wouldn't be able to necessarily punch through that

This can kind of take care of the target on the other side of the wall without going through the wall The Navy has something different that you working on So this is a 30 millimeter round correct Yes this is a 30 by

173 millimeter round that the Navy is putting on some of their ships. It's still in developmental

phase and it is also an airburst round. It's a little different than what the Army is doing

Obviously the form factor is different, but it's being fired out of a big cannon

And while the Army's round is more of an HE round and not necessarily optimized for counter air

this round that we're doing for the Navy is optimized for counter air

What you see here is a couple of rows of tungsten subprojectiles

There's 168 of them. And the way this air bursts is, upon reaching the time of flight

These tungsten projectiles are ejected in a forward cone of fragments because the round is spiraling

This is the resulting frag pattern. Now, this is just a one-quarter scale 3D printed target array

The actual target that we scanned this from is about four times the size of it

and this is the pattern. Obviously, you can see that all these tungsten small fragments

will result in a bunch of little holes about four times the size of this

Very effective against counter-UAS targets. You bet. You bet. And like you said, the spoke pattern, the cyclical pattern

is because the round is spinning, and as it explodes, that cone of destruction is spinning in air as well

and that's what makes that impact pattern. Correct. All right. Joe, really appreciate your time today

Thank you so much for joining us today on our Weapons and Workers segment. Appreciate it. That's all the time we have for this week's episode, or excuse me, this week's segment of our Weapon of the Week