Projector for defeating buried mines
Inventors: Richard Vanaman, William Bergeria (ARDEC), Mark Majerus (DE Technologies)
Patent No.: US 9,157,705
Date of Patent: Oct. 13, 2015
PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. -- During their research, Picatinny engineers Richard Vanaman and William Bergeria were looking for a solution to neutralize certain types of anti-personnel landmines that are blast resistant.
These types of mines require applied pressure over a sustained period of time to arm and fire, making them difficult to defeat by more conventional methods.
Moreover, varied burial depth and accurate marking once the mines are detected, compound the defeat problem.
Together with Mark Majerus of DE Technologies of Middletown, Delaware, the two engineers from the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center sought a way to solve the problem.
They were granted U.S. Patent 9157705 for a projector for defeating buried mines.
The patent covers a relatively small anti-personnel mine device with a housing about 2 to about 3 inches in diameter, by about 2 to about 4 inches in length.
The device projects a dispersion pattern of 1/8 to 3/8 inch diameter hard fragments over at least a 3- to 4-inch radius circle to neutralize a typical buried, anti-personnel mine.
The device contains about 125 to 190 grams of plastic explosive which, when detonated, impacts a gas push plate against which an array of the fragments are lodged--the gas push plate and the fragments being encased in a puck-shaped matrix of plastic or resin.
In addition to neutralizing the mine, the overburden atop the buried mine is expelled, exposing the mine and providing enhanced safety in removal and revealing if the mine is daisy-chained to other mines.
The anti-mine system is capable of being positioned by small- to medium-scale robots to defeat buried mines.
"Threats encountered in maneuver operations present so many variables from a design and development standpoint, that we adopted a toolkit approach," Vanaman said.
"This approach allowed us to target specific threats and reduce the number of design variables. As a result, we were able to develop a less complex materiel solution that was low-cost and highly effective."
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The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to ensure decisive overmatch for unified land operations to empower the Army, the joint warfighter and our nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
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