Well, here's the manufacturers PDF on the subject- it sounds very spiffy and one assumes they've trialled it and decided to spend the cash. Allegedly it can put the firer on target to within a half degree, which will definitely narrow things down.

I believe the US is fielding similar systems in some scale - but yes, put that system into action with trained infantry, already provided with good quality optical sights and I would think you'd see some very accurate return fire coming back way too quickly for comfort if you were attacking them.

Interesting to see how well it works in the field - and step two, add networking so that systems can share their information and triangulate from there. Pass that to blue force tracker and you're automatically updating the picture as you go,

Ian

 

Let's put this in perspective - film makers are using signal processing techniques to work out which seat a film might have been recorded from by picking out discrete surround sound channels from a stereo recording using the measured strengths from the theatre speakers, so they can then go to the cinema, pick out the lucky person who bought the ticket and peg 'em from CCTV footage. That's going some :) 

Sound from the firers own weapon will be dead easy to pick out, the BPSL (base pressure signal level) will be mammoth, a huge spike that probably pushes the mike into clipping - very easy to rule out of the plot. Signals from friendly forces may be harder to rule out but if the fire is presented on the display, it'll be close and the firer will be able to mainly look around and use their brain cell. Nothing is perfect but this system can plot the sounds and presumably give a good indication of where any particular weapon is firing from. I wonder if it has a map of particular "signatures" from weapons - an AK has a fairly distinctive sound compared to an M16 for instance - and an M4 has a different sound again due to the shorter barrel.

Again, I maintain that this sort of system will become much more powerful if it's shared by a personal network - if each soldier is in a network node and in each case the sound data can be presented with a time synchronised  stamp, then triangulation of a source could be very accurate indeed. One for the Future Soldier ideas I guess.

Ian

 

 

thanks for the PDF, much appreciated, certainly seems interesting. im still concerned however by the presence of friendly forces fire or the fire from the users weapon.