posted 05-13-2002 01:03 PM               

WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- A new ballistic technology that can fire burst rates in excess of one million rounds per minute from a 36-barrel weapon was one of the reasons Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld 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 gun styles that can fire at the rate of some 6,000 rounds per minute. Infantry rifles average 600 rounds, which is the firing rate for a magazine of 15 to 30 rounds.

Admiral Bill Owens, a retired former deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and author of "Lifting the Fog of War," a controversial book about defense modernization, is the chairman of the board of Metal Storm Ltd.

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.

Chuck Vehlow, a former general manager of the Boeing helicopter division, is the company's new chief corporate officer. Vehlow has negotiated big-ticket procurement contracts and technology licensing agreements with the Pentagon.

Most of Metal Storm's work is top secret. Already under development is an "area denial weapons system," including 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-meter-wide carpet of grenades for about two miles, firing all its grenades simultaneously with a five-yard separation on impact.

Another gun under development for a small combat aerial vehicle is multi-barreled and can fire 270 rounds onto a target in just .001 seconds without stress on the air frame or any drop in air speed.

The company's advanced individual combat weapon program is destined to replace small arms throughout the western alliance, said Mike O'Dwyer, company chief executive officer. The prototypes now being developed have a dual barrel capability to fire both 20-mm and 40-mm bursting munitions and standard 5.56-mm NATO ammunition.

The weapon will also fire "less-than-lethal" 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 100 percent electronic. Its electronically variable rate of fire has been confirmed to one 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, no separate magazine, no ammunition feed or ejection system. The only moving parts in this revolutionary ballistic technology are the bullets or other projectiles.

Next to "Metal Storm's" firepower, said a senior Pentagon acquisition official, the lumbering, 45-ton Crusader artillery tube would be obsolete equipment.

At the core of the new technology is a projectile design that allows multiple high-pressure ammo to be stacked in-line in a barrel, then electronically fired in sequence. In turn, multiple barrels can be grouped together 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 also allow on-board selection at the press of a button between a non-lethal response capability and the kind of lethality that will deny an area to the enemy without having to use anti-personnel landmines.

Metal Storm also makes the Vle, 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.

U.S. defense sources 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."

posted 05-27-2002 01:52 AM               

LAWTON, Okla.- The windows in this old Army town rattle from the boom of artillery at nearby Fort Sill almost as often as wind stirs up dust on the prairie.

The blasts ricocheting off the Wichita Mountains are reminders that the economy here is tied to the sprawling fort in southwest Oklahoma, the largest field artillery base in the world.

But the base and surrounding cities are worried about missing out on a golden opportunity to bolster the economy by becoming home of the Crusader - a computerized cannon able to rain artillery rounds on enemy forces more than 25 miles away.

The Defense Department wants to eliminate the $11 billion program, but residents on and off the fort aren't ready to stop fighting for what they say would be the world's dominant artillery system. "It's a symbol of the future for this part of the state," said retired Maj. Gen. Lee Baxter.

Building 480 Crusaders would create 150 jobs for Elgin - population 1,200 - just up the road from Fort Sill, which employs about 5,000 civilians and 14,000 military personnel.

The 130-year-old fort taught thousands of soldiers to fire cannons that helped win World War II and fight in Vietnam. The crusade for Crusader is alive and well in the area. The Elgin mayor often wears a Crusader T-shirt or cap and has a tan, plastic model of the two-part system - Crusader and its ammunition hauler - on his desk. A colorful sign off Interstate 44 already boasts that Elgin is "Home of Crusader."

Crusader's origin traces to the late 1980s, when the Army started shopping for an artillery piece that could keep pace with faster, stronger tanks and armored troop carriers. Originally planned to enter service in 2008, the Crusader itself is basically a big gun - looking like a tank with a 17-foot, nine-inch barrel. It fires 155 mm shells, using a computerized targeting system to enhance accuracy. "It's certainly light years ahead of anything that's available anywhere in the world," Baxter said.

Army officials at Fort Sill are less willing to talk about Crusader because of the political fallout surrounding the system, now at the center of a battle pitting President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld against Congress. At the fort, soldiers roll their eyes at mention of the sore subject.

Brig. Gen. Guy Bourn, who commands the Third Armored Corps Artillery, quickly points out that the Army's current Paladin artillery gun is quite capable. "Crusader is really an incredible system," he said. "The engineering and the capability that they would bring to the battlefield are leaps above what we have now. But what we have now is credible and still very capable and still very much relevant and needed in our Army. That's the message."

Rumsfeld has said the Crusader, while an improvement over current artillery pieces, was still too big and cumbersome for the lighter, quicker Army of the future. With or without Crusader, Chris Hellman, a military analyst with the Center for Defense Information in Washington, D.C., doesn't think Fort Sill has to worry much about its future. "I don't see the mission of units like those stationed at Fort Sill going away entirely," he said. And Larry Thoma, the mayor of Elgin, doesn't want people to think his town will die off without those 150 jobs. "Elgin is going to survive," said Thoma. "But we're not giving up hope either because we believe that eventually something is going to come out of this."

Elgin and Lawton buzz with Crusader talk, and many wonder why the government spent $2 billion to develop the system if it wasn't a sure thing. "The government - they drive me nuts," said David Gill, who owns a photography studio in Lawton. At the fort, soldiers put on a field artillery show about once a week for privates who've just arrived for basic training and community leaders who want to know more about the Army.

Fresh recruits - still learning their drill sergeants' names and how to do acceptable push-ups - shout "Oh yeah," and "All right!" as the howitzers fire and M-16 rifles spray bullets. The show is a preview of coming attractions for the basic trainees, said Jon Long, the fort's public affairs officer. "As long as there are armies, there will be a need for artillery," he said.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nat-gen/2002/may/26/052602009.html

posted 05-27-2002 06:00 AM            

Here is some more definitive information on how it'd done. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001/9/ultimate_firepower/