Posted on 04/29/2015 7:14:00 PM PDT by markomalley
Pew! Pew! Soldiers with handheld energy blasters are the stuff of G.I. Joe, not real life … until now. The U.S Army is currently testing electricity guns for possible use against electronics on the battlefield. They don’t look like props from the popular cartoon show but, rather like regular standard-issue M4 rifles with a pair of antennas that shoot out from the barrel and then spread, giving the front end of the gun a musket-like shape.
Soldiers “already carry rifles. Why not use something that every soldier already carries,” said James E. Burke, an electronics engineer with the U.S.Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC. Burke spoke with Defense One at a National Defense Industry Association event in Baltimore on Tuesday.
See the slide from Burke’s presentation below.
Burke’s apparatus, which he’s named the “Burke Pulser,” consists of two wide antennas, a piezoelectric generator and a few other small bits and pieces. It has a blast shield to protect the user from electricity levels that the inventor describes as “hazardous.”
The Pulser takes the explosive energy released when the gun fires and converts it into pulses of electrical energy. This is done via the piezoelectric effect, which derives an electric charge when pressure is exerted on crystalline materials such as quartz, changing the balance of positive and negative ions.
The Pulser isn’t the first electricity gun ever invented. One of the more interesting prototypes that have emerged over the last several years came from, Seattle-based hacker Rob Flickenger, who cast a Nerf gun in aluminum and rigged it to shoot 20,000 volts of electricity a short distance. (See the video below.)
The military, too, has been experimenting with so-called energy weapons for decades, including lasers. “Most of these are vehicle-towed and require a huge power system,” Burke noted. “The antennas are sometimes seven feet.” The Burke Pulser, meanwhile, fits onto an M4 rifle like a standard suppressor. Burke estimates that the cost to mass-produce them would be less than $1,000 each.
What do you do with an energy gun? You don’t shoot people. The gun is intended for use against electronics, potentially giving dismounted soldiers an edge against the ever-wider range electronic and cyber threats that they might face on patrol:Bluetooth-enabled improvised explosive devices, consumer drones modified to be more deadly, and the like.
The Army is currently testing the Pulser against an assortment of devices, a 555 timer, a bipolar junction transistor and a yellow light emitting diode, or LED, combined into a single target. “All these things pretty much generalize all the common electronics you’ll find in a circuit board,” Burke said.“What we’re going to do is fire at it. If the LED light stops blinking, it was defeated and if smoke comes up, it was destroyed.”
As for the range, “we’re still investigating,” said Burke The capabilities measured so far “turn classified very quickly.” He couldn’t go into detail about how the tests were progressing, but he called them “very promising.”
We keep getting more and more amazing weapons but how will they fight the burning of our cities, the soon to be 20 trillion dollar debt, the hatred of Christians...I don’t know.
I hope they are better than those issued to Imperial Storm Troopers. They can’t hit anything. Also their armor must have been lowest bidder as it doesn’t stop anything.
Active Duty ping.
Can they be put on Stune?
If I Were An Evil Overlord
56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.
We are rapidly bankrupting our very own nation.
America needs to rebuild our own country. We need to bring back all the industry we’ve been sending everywhere else.
Bring it back to America.
Just a general observation, but these kinds of weapons require a lot of energy. It seems like good old projectile weapons still pack the biggest bang for the buck.
Not quite there yet ....
Blasting a circuit designed to trigger an explosion with a bunch of energy seems pretty risky to me. Particularly if the IED is large enough to be dangerous at the range of the weapon. Its kind of like throwing rocks at unexploded ordnance or a land mine you see in the road.
A carefully controlled version, perhaps mounted on a robot might be more useful.
This device actually uses the energy from a blank cartridge to power something like an EMP generator. I saw an article.about explosive EMP generators in popular mechanics or popular mechanics years back. Don’t understand the physics, and I’m not sure if this thing uses the same principle, but chemical explosive to electricity has been an idea for a while.
I wont torture myself about wars that should or should not have been fought and trade agreements that should or should not have been signed, I’ve done enough of that.
The key is to do the right thing going forward. There is no room for error and twenty months to CRUZ Control. That is a painfully long time as things stand now.
I have seen those Evil Overlord/Legion of Terror lists before. they are one of the funnier things I have seen on the internet.
Howzabout equipping the Maryland National Guard with this gizmo? Maybe it could take out the rioters’ Obamaphones and they wouldn’t be able to receive their marching orders.
Considering the range of Bluetooth is about 30 feet, I think the bad guys will inadvertently become suicide bombers. Don't remotely controlled bombs use cell phones, not Bluetooth?
Are you SURE it wasn’t in popular mechanics?
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