Looking to modernize the iconic M4 assault rifle for 21st century skirmishes, the US Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center are working on an attachment that will transform the rifle into a Tesla coil-style electricity gun capable of frying enemy electronics from at a range.
Adhering to the naming convention embodied by the kind of weaponry seemingly rooted in science-fiction, the device is codenamed “Burke’s Pulsar,” although, Burke’s Pulsar won’t resemble a laser cannon out of a first-person shooter video, but rather an antenna extending from the barrel. “Soldiers already carry rifles. Why not use something that every soldier already carries,” explains the venerable James E. Burke, the electronics engineer with the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), for whom the attachment is named after. The apparatus consists of two wide antennas, a piezoelectric generator, some electronic bits, and a blast shield that protects the wielder from the “hazardous” current.
To discharge its electric blasts, Pulsar harnesses the explosive energy released every time the gun fires blank rounds and converts them into electric pulses by exploiting the piezoelectric effect. When pressure is exerted onto certain crystalline materials (quartz in this case), the mounting pressure offsets the balance of positive and negative ions and generates an electric charge. The ensuing electrical energy is then channeled through the two antenna and spread from the muzzle of the carbine to disable and destroying the circuitry on enemy electronics.
Presumably, the effect will act as a sort of reverse EMP, where instead of shutting off the devices, Pulsar will simply fry them at whatever current and voltage the US military deems is necessary to accomplish this task. Of course, the specifics on the weapon’s range and power remains classified.
Unsurprisingly, this is not the first electricity gun to come into existence. A few years ago, Maker Rob Flickenger devised a battery-powered Tesla coil in the shape of a rifle using an aluminum casted Nerf gun. The resulting “Tesla Gun” fired 20,000 volts of electricity at a short distance. The military, too, has been experimenting with energy weapons for decades, but as Burke himself points out, military-grade laser weapons are typically massive, “most of these are vehicle-towed and require a huge power system. The antennas are sometimes seven feet.” By contrast, Pulsar fits onto the M4 as a standard suppressor, and can be mass-produced at the cost of $1,000 per unit.
At the present, the Army is testing the Pulsar against a variety of devices, including a 555 timer, a bipolar junction transistor, and a yellow LED. “All these things pretty much generalize all the common electronics you’ll find in a circuit board,” Burke explained. “What we’re going to do is fire at it. If the LED light stops blinking, it was defeated and if smoke comes up, it was destroyed.”
Source: Defenseone
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