AMC Collaborative Engineering Federation (ACEF) - iBiome Continuity Services

The U.S. Army is currently involved with the study and development of an air-burst munition system for application on automatic medium caliber weapon systems, such as the M242 25 mm cannon. An air-burst munition is designed to detonate in the air over aspecific location in the battlefield to more effectively engage targets in defilade. An oboard programmable fuse typically controls the round detonation. The current systems under consideration by the U.S. Army possess significant drawbacks in that theyeither require costly fuse designs or additional heavy structure to be attached to the barrel muzzle, which is detrimental to pointing accuracy. In this proposal we present a novel fiber optic based system to measure round exit velocity (REV) that can beintegrated to an inductive fuse setting system for real time programming of a standard air burst munition fuse. The proposed barrel mounted system is small, lightweight, and low cost. The main objectives of this effort are to optimize the phase I system,fabricate a prototype, and conduct live-fire testing on an M242 to demonstrate performance. The proposed system has other advantageous uses including using the REV data to improve aiming accuracy and to monitor barrel wear and corrosion.