The Army Has Bullet Radar?

One of the problems with guns and shooting is that, if you’re trying to fire at somebody who is trying to kill you, it’s a bit difficult to determine their location. Fortunately, the Army is vividly aware of this particular problem and have developed a neat little iPod-sized gadget with a shoulder-mounted sensor to solve it. Now you don’t need to worry about where the lead is coming from; you can just duck and find out.

It’s called the Individual Gunshot Detector, and it’s a pretty neat demonstration of computational extrapolation. The IGD, developed by QinetiQ of North America, uses four acoustic sensors to detect gunfire. It uses that data to figure out where the fire is coming from, and then gives the soldier a direction on its screen. Even better, for the weary soldier with lots of gear to carry, it weighs less than two pounds.

The first of these are going live in Afghanistan later this month, with a goal of having 15,000 of them out in the field. It’s hoped that it can be integrated into Land Warrior and Nett Warrior systems so that in the future, when a soldier gets shot, his unit knows he’s injured and in what direction the bullet came from.

But for now, soldiers can at least know where the fire is coming from.