#Future

Last year, we reported on the Army’s effort to develop a non-pyrotechnic tracer round which would provide “One-Way Luminescence” (OWL) revealing the shotline to the shooter only, and not in a 360 degree arc around the gun. The benefits of this kind of tracer go beyond low visibility, however. A non-pyrotechnic tracer would be low profile, able to be stuck to the back of the standard ball bullet, improving the effectiveness of the tracer rounds that actually hit the target. It would be cheaper, and would wear out the weapon’s barrel less quickly. Finally, the trajectory of OWL non-pyrotechnic tracers would more closely match that of the standard ball ammunition, improving hit probability, and could potentially allow every round fired to be a tracer.

IHS Global Spec (part of the publishing group that publishes Janes) have published an interesting article about developments in commercial and military exoskeleton. Apparently the US Army is developing an exoskeleton that would allow better control of small arms. Dr. Roger Pink writes …

The Joint Service Small Arms Program (JSSAP), which includes the program formerly called Lightweight Small Arms Technologies (LSAT) has unveiled a new scaled-up 7.62mm machine gun that fires a larger variant of that program’s cylindrical plastic-cased 7.62mm ammunition. Military.com’s KitUp! reports:

InRange has an excellent interview (and range video!) with Jim Sullivan, a designer of the AR-15, Ultimax 100, Mini-14, and other firearms. In it, they get to fire Sullivan’s improved M4, which is more tolerant of sustained fire and employs the “constant recoil” principle used in Sullivan’s Ultimax 100 machine gun. I’ve fired the latter weapon, and I can say without a doubt that Sullivan means what he says when talking about its performance and soft-shooting characteristics. To help illustrate this, here’s a video of my friend Arthur firing the Ultimax 100 taken by a high speed camera at about 1,000 frames per second (due to the lighting conditions that evening, the quality is not as high as I would like, but the effect of the constant recoil mechanism is very evident):

… and it is in Germany. If you don’t do anything else today, just make sure you watch this video.