Metal storm warning!: Guns special technical report

Guns Magazine, April, 2002 by Robert Bruce

With the dramatic video game/sci-fi/rock music name of Metal Storm, and more than $400 million in government backing and private bankrolling, Australian inventor Mike O'Dwyer's patented new system seems poised to launch a revolution: overthrowing centuries of traditional firearm technology with the merest click of a computer mouse.

I first encountered Metal Storm at the prestigious 2001 NDIA Small Arms Conference where the company had an informational exhibit, and O'Dwyer himself was on line to give a technical presentation. Among several dozen attractive and expensive display booths highlighting the latest interesting but relatively small advances in traditional arms and ammo for military and police applications, the Metal Storm booth was almost continually crowded.

I was finally able to elbow my way up to watch the firm's impressive video presentation. I also got a close look at some photos of actual prototype hardware being fired and computer-generated graphics showing conceptions of future applications. Alas, there was no hardware on the tables to pick up and examine.

All set to walk away and mentally log the Metal Storm name for future reference in my "I told you so" files, I was approached by a small and friendly fellow who introduced himself as Mike. As it turned out this was Mr. O'Dwyer himself, the man behind all this whiz-bang gadgetry that was generating considerable buzz.

Ya gotta love it. In sharpest contrast to your average overdressed, over-paid, over-cautious, and overly smooth government/industry product rep, the owlish O'Dwyer is on the road in person. Real life -- whatcha see is watcha get.

For the past couple of years he has been patiently explaining to audiences large and small around the free world about how he has taken the principle of a computer's printer and applied it to the job of launching slugs in ways previously unattainable due to the laws of physics.

Dots of Death

Company promotional materials have attempted to make it easy for guys like me with limited brain capacity to grasp the Metal Storm operational principle by comparing it to that of an ordinary inkjet printer head for your desktop computer. The company has produced a video that uses eye-popping computer-generated graphics to show just how a printer head knows when to squirt a microburst of the right color ink at exactly the right time, and how it is made to do this at extraordinarily high speed. O'Dywer seems to have adapted this technology to have a computer program electronically fire rounds at infinitely tailorable rates and sequences.

In his Metal Storm ballistic system, the only significant moving parts are projectiles from his uniquely designed caseless ammunition, loaded one in front of the other as many as practical, depending on the length and caliber of the launch tube. Tossed into the dustbin are all the parts and paraphernalia necessary in conventional multi-shot weaponry for. feeding, mechanically firing, extracting and ejecting. Need more ammo? Just pull out the block of barrels and stuff in another.

Scientific American magazine reported on Bertha, the thirty-six barrel, 9mm prototype, successfully firing 180 rounds in about one one-hundredth of a second! Pause for a moment and think about one one-hundredth of a second to shoot 180 rounds. Even in the electric-powered, multi-barrel, 6,000 rpm Phalanax, it would take almost 2 full seconds to do the same thing.

Now, it should take no flight of imagination to see how the simple Metal Storm box of bullets in barrels could be a far more efficient way to knock Out a supersonic, sea-skimming Exocet ship-killing missile than current stuff like the big, cumbersome, complex and expensive cannon caliber, super Gatling type Phalanax and Goalkeeper systems used on many free world warships. In fact, this very possibility is being seriously pursued in the United States and abroad.

Sniper Storm

This and some other configurations, including a handgun, have been successfully demonstrated for high-level leaders in military and scientific communities in O'Dwyer's home country and in the United States. In fact, following a live-fire test in July 2001 at an Army Research Laboratory facility near Washington, D.C., Metal Storm received a contract from techno-gurus at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency worth more than $10 million of our American tax dollars to develop an "Advanced Sniper Rifle." Partners in this endeavor include. U.S.-based Science Applications International and Alliant TechSystems. Alliant, it should be pointed out, is also the prime contractor on the American military's Objective Individual Combat Weapon. Hmm.

The conceptual prototype appears to be fairly conventional in layout, with the exception of a cluster of four barrels that may be of varying caliber. Each contains stacked caseless rounds with the likelihood of including different types of projectiles optimized for different applications.

Electronic fire control allows the gunner to program and launch the optimum combination and firing rate of projectiles packed in the quick-replace barrel cluster. An ultra-sophisticated sighting system is also planned, incorporating cutting-edge developments in target acquisition and tracking under adverse conditions, compensation for ordnance and environmental factors, and anything else to help gunners take out their target at extreme range.