Soldiers pinned down by sniper fire might one day be able to pinpoint where
their attacker is hiding, using a new detector invented by BBN Technologies in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. The “crack” as the shot leaves the muzzle can be
masked by background noise, so the detector’s helmet-mounted microphones instead
track the bullet’s supersonic shock wave. If two or more soldiers wearing the
equipment are either side of the shot, “the system gives a very good estimate of
the bullet’s trajectory”, says Gregory Duckworth of BBN Technologies. “From
there, it works back to where the sniper is likely to be,” he says. The idea is
to display the information on a flip-down helmet-mounted visor.
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