Design and Development of a Robotically Emplaced Hand Packed Shaped Charge; Conference paper

摘要

The recent use of buried Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) has resulted in a high cost to the U.S. Army, in terms of both lives and materiel lost in the South West Asian (SWA) theater. The safe destruction of these types of devices is currently the responsibility of explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) operators. In an attempt to make a dangerous job safer, U.S. Army EOD personnel are increasingly using robots to emplace charges that can destroy deeply buried ordnance. In an attempt to destroy these deeply buried IEDs, ARDEC EOD and Energetics, Warheads, and Environmental Technology (EWET) personnel teamed to develop a high performance anti-IED shaped charge. This was a problem for which, at least up to this point, there had been no dedicated solution. Due to the urgent need to field such a device, any potential solution would be required to be loaded locally in theater in order to preclude complications associated with the normal acquisition process. In addition, any solution would have to be capable of being deployed via a remotely controlled robot. The efforts contained within this paper were conducted over an 8 month time period from the beginning of the first test to the time that the units were actually deployed to the theater of operation.