SOTECH Ennouncement - January 6, 2009
SNIPER AMMUNITION
U.S. Army Special Operations Command has issued a solicitation for 161,280 rounds of .223 cal with Sierra Match King 69 Grain. The muzzle velocity is not expected to exceed 2,850 feet per second and, according to USASOC, the Sierra Match King is required to meet the weight, type, dimension, charge and accuracy requirement of the round. The ammunition is expected to be used in a sniper weapon system where accuracy is critical. The ammunition is required to be water resistant but not waterproof. Open Tip Match and Boat Tailed rounds are both required.
The Office of Naval Research has issued a statement of work that will hopefully result in a pre-production demonstration unit of a maritime laser weapons system, and the development of multiple pre-production variants of the system. The pre-production demonstration unit is being identified as the ONR Maritime Laser Demonstrator. The program will develop a maritime laser demonstrator during both the technology development and system development demonstration phases of funding.
The prototype system installation is not seen as being limited to installation on a particular class of ship, and shall at the very minimum support the U.S. Navy DDG, LCS, CG, LSD, LPD, LHA, LHD and FFG ship classes. The MLD system will be built to meet the specific survivability and self defense capability requirements for major naval combatants by demonstrating the self defense functions of high probability of intercept/precision direction finding, target identification, and delivery and verification of delivered laser energy are suitable to meet the system and lethality requirements against targets specified in the classified requirement (strongly believed to include a small boat threat—sounds perfect in the anti-pirate role!).
Through the application of advanced solid state or electrical laser, directed energy and targeting component technology with open systems design for all computational requirements will also provide applicability to other future and existing naval surface combatants and scalability to support ship self defense system functional requirements.
Current U.S. Navy surface combatants employ a large number of kinetic weapons to enable surface warfare, self defense functions. Historically, each function (and hence system) has its own magazine, loading, handling, operator, and logistics/maintenance tail. This traditional systems approach results in various fratricide and time domain problems that degrade system performance and increase life-cycle cost for the combatant. Time of flight, effective pin point lethality, and fratricide de-confliction are difficult to reduce any further when restricted to classic kinetic weapons approaches utilizing missiles or projectiles. Additionally, planned future shipboard defense systems using lasers require more power, shorter decision times and higher duty cycles, which may further compound power distribution problems or fire control solutions. ♦