Knocking Down Doors
DOOR BREACHERS GET TROOPS INDOORS.
USSOCOM found it was deploying more and more warfighters into urban areas over the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom and other conflicts in recent years. As operators would fight in urban areas, they would often find that they would have to breach doors or walls to secure specific targets that were inside of buildings.
This situation inspired USSOCOM in 2005 to develop a small business innovation research (SBIR) initiative seeking advanced door breaching ammunition that its warfighters could use to more efficiently gain entry into those buildings. Specifically, the command sought solutions for ammunition that would fit in a 12 gauge shotgun or an M203 40 mm grenade launcher to breach various kinds of doors.
“USSOCOM has a need to develop better door breaching capabilities,” the solicitation read. “Doors in the current area of responsibility (AOR) may be constructed from, but not limited to, solid wood of varying thicknesses, metal over wood, metal, wooden frame, metal frame, various door handle and lock combinations.”
The solicitation continued to note that warfighters currently fired munitions from 12 gauge shotguns to breach doors, but a 40 mm round would enable shooters to breach a door from a distance, which could prove safer for the operator. “Both the 12 gauge and 40 mm rounds must be safe to the shooter employing it in the normal shooting mode, and safe for anyone that is at least 3 feet from the enemy side of the door,” the solicitation said. “The recoil cannot exceed current system recoil. The computed recoil energy must not exceed 60 foot-pounds.”
The solicitation suggested that an initial target door would be made of wood and at least 2.5 inches thick. It also would have heavy-duty hinges and a deadbolt. A successful door-breaching round from a shotgun would remove one hinge with one shot, the solicitation added. An additional single shot must remove a deadbolt or latch. A shotgun shooter would stand with a barrel only 0-2 inches from the target, and no lethal fragments should enter the room after firing.
An operator with a 40 mm grenade launcher would fire at the door from 20-300 feet, the solicitation continued. A qualifying round would remove the door completely or at least break half the door off from the rest of it. Phase 1 of the SBIR involved the design of an affordable 12 gauge or 40 mm round to breach various doors and limited testing of the design. Phase 2 involved the full development of the ammunition while figuring out how it would function in various weapon configurations.
IMPACT REACTIVE PROJECTILE
Polyshok Inc., based in Panama City, Fla., was the company that successfully completed both phases of the program and continues to work with USSOCOM on a door-breaching round. Because the development project does not enter a third phase until January or so, Polyshok is not free to divulge many details of the program, said Charles Glover, Polyshok head of technical development. However, Glover did provide SOTECH with some information the company’s past performance that led to its participation in the SBIR program.
“About eight years ago, we developed a 12 gauge shotgun round that was designed to be used as an anti-personnel round,” Glover said. “It was a low-collateral round, and it dissipated energy very quickly on impact. That round became a staple in a lot of law enforcement agencies as a breaching/anti-personnel round.”
USSOCOM, impressed by the round’s capabilities, invited Polyshok to attend a briefing at its headquarters in Tampa, Fla., about three years ago. Officials at USSOCOM asked about using the round, known as the impact reactive projectile (IRP), as a breaching round. Glover offered his opinion that the round was best as an anti-personnel round and would need further development to serve as a doorbreaching round.
“So basically they asked us to use the low-collateral technology that we had developed and secured patents on over the years to put together a breaching round that would provide the same low potential for collateral damage as our anti-personnel round but in a more terminally effective round,” Glover recalled. Polyshok revisited its technology and developed its door-breaching round for USSOCOM. The idea was to transfer the same terminal effectiveness from its IRP anti-personnel round to a new round that also would create low collateral damage.
Glover explained how the IRP round works, noting that most conventional ammunition reacts differently to different substances that it hits. “With anti-personnel ammunition, expansion of the projectile is considered hand-in-hand with its ability to transfer kinetic energy,” Glover detailed. “So you have all different types of designs that allow the projectile to expand larger than its firing diameter. The problem with that type of expansion is that it expands during contact time typically. That means the round only expands as it travels through viscous material and only expands as long as it is in forward motion and in contact with a viscous medium.”
Shooting someone in the center of his body during a gunfight would very likely pierce a void in the body such as a lung cavity, Glover described. Under those circumstances, a typical bullet would expand as it passed through the membrane between the target’s ribs. It would stop expanding and stop transferring energy as it entered the void of the lung cavity. Then it would start expanding again as it left the target’s body.
“If you took a standard handgun round and you could capture the round as it went through a person in that scenario, the bullet would be [about] reloadable as it would be in such good shape. It simply has not had enough contact time to be effective,” Glover declared.
By contrast, the IRP round expands during real time. Once it impacts a medium, it starts expanding and continues. Polyshok’s 12 gauge round hits its target as 73 caliber shot in the scenario where the target is shot in the ribs, Glover said. As the round left the back ribs, it would exit as a 150-200 caliber shot. Once activated, the round continues to expand regardless of the material it travels through. That capability took about five years and a million dollars to develop, Glover estimated.
“It allows you to shoot into an automobile, take out the driver, and not have to worry about breaking the glass on the other side of the car,” he said. “Low-collateral was a secondary thought. Nobody in a gunfight gives a damn about how safe their ammo is. When someone is trying their dead-level best to kill you, and you are returning fire, in that moment in time you do not care how safe your ammo is. Trust me on that one. The only thing you are concerned with is shutting the threat down and doing so quickly.”
The Polyshok IRP round was developed to end a gunfight immediately, giving the target no opportunity to fire back even if fatally wounded.
NON-LETHAL SOLUTION
Mechanical Solutions Inc., based in Parsippany, N.J., entered the SBIR program with hopes of developing nonlethal munitions for breaching doors, Bill Marscher, Mechanical Solutions technical director, told SOTECH. When breaching a door, it is important to strive to avoid hurting people inside who may be innocent, he said, so his company developed the SafeShot 12 gauge shotgun round.
“The round involves the use of metal particles that are held together by rare earth magnets. They form a solid slug as long as the magnet’s active,” Marscher described. “When that slug hits door hardware like a heavy-duty hinge or a heavyduty handle, the mass blows it apart. In the process of doing that, the rare earth magnets shatter and the steel dust that makes up the slug scatters like dust after it has destroyed the door hardware.”
In one test, Mechanical Solutions placed a witness plate 12 inches behind the door hardware and blew the door off its hinges. The plate suffered only minor scratches, Marscher said. “A human being standing near the door when our cartridge was fired would not be seriously hurt,” Marscher declared. “Also, there would not be any backscatter that could harm the Marine or soldier that was firing the weapon. That’s been a problem occasionally when a metal slug gets fired. It could shatter and come back at the person who fired the shot and injure them.”
Mechanical Solutions developed the SafeShot round under the first phase of the SBIR program. USSOCOM decided it preferred a metal slug to the non-lethal option at present, and it continued with development of the Polyshok round.
“It’s an option for the future. It’s not fielded at this point. We are looking for an end-user that finds that attractive,” Marscher stated. “It proved itself out in the testing. It was a Phase one test under an SBIR, which usually only involves a paper study. We did all of the paper study including element analysis to look at the lethality effects and the ability to take out the door hardware. We optimized the design of the slug and verified that it would break apart properly. Then we made a handful of them and tested them out and they worked exactly the way we predicted.”
Mechanical Solutions started developing ammunition around 2000, but the events of September 11 inspired the company to invest its resources more heavily into less-than-lethal and non-lethal ammunition. Previously, the company had been involved in commercial activities such as the manufacture of high-speed rotating machinery and high-powered density compressors. They found the tools they had to evaluate that equipment were very effective in design evaluation of nonlethal munitions weapons as well.
GRENADE LAUNCHED BREACHER
USSOCOM examined at least one other option during the SBIR program—this one from Martin Electronics Inc. (MEI) of Perry, Fla. But MEI had already developed its 40 mm grenade launcher munition, said Matt Eckel, MEI director of business development.
About five years ago, the company started developing new 40 mm rounds because it didn’t see a lot of activity in the market, Eckel recalled. After surveying operators, MEI found they wanted more explosives and more fragmentation in their 40 mm rounds. So MEI developed the Hellhound 40 mm low velocity multipurpose grenade.
“We shot it against a door at one point in a demonstration,” Eckel said. “We expected it to make a hole or something but instead it blew the door off its hinges. We stopped and said, hey, we have something here. We had heard about the need for door breaching. This was a case of unintended consequences! That’s the best way to invent something I think. Then we started focusing on how to make it work better against doors. We came up with a few modifications. Now it will blow any door,” he added.
The Hellhound has a metal body filled with A5. It has a rotating band and a point initiating base detonating fuze along with a cartridge case assembling using MEI’s energy delivery system. “One of the toughest doors we had was a steel commercial door on a steel frame opening toward the shooter. You had to work against the frame and everything, not just the lock.
The Hellhound hits that thing with such a blast that it crumples that door and pops it through the frame,” Eckel described. The USSOCOM SBIR was the first MEI had ever conducted. After looking into how SBIR programs worked, company executives realized they had a fully developed product already, which was further along than Phase 1 of the SBIR. We jumped into proving the product,” Eckel said. “We did it, and they were happy. They bought us a bunch of equipment like cameras and recoil testing equipment. Then they paid us, and shook our hands, and left.”
MEI continues to sell the Hellhound grenade to U.S. military customers. The company also plans to continue to develop the Hellhound to create an improved door breaching round. “The Hellhound is a fragmentation, anti-personnel grenade, which has the beautiful byproduct of being a door breacher,” Eckel said. “Because of our door breaching exposure, some customers are interested in a nonfragmenting version. So that’s the next development that we will be working on.” ♦