Author: Grumpy
The U.S. Military’s Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division (NSWC Crane), has designed and developed the Drone Killer Cartridge (DKC). The cost-effective family of ammunition is designed to increase a warfighter’s probability of a hit and kill against drone threats.
DKC is designed for use in rifles, automatic rifles and machine guns, but it disperses a cluster of projectiles upon firing with an effective range far greater than a conventional shotgun’s capabilities. The effect increases probability hits and kills against Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) threats in a way that also minimizes risk of collateral damage from projectiles that don’t impact the target.
The DKC family of loads includes both pelletized and segmented designs. The segmented version includes a one-piece projectile that mechanically self-separates into discrete, spin-stabilized sub-projectiles prior to muzzle exit. Pelletized DKC includes a projectile assembly containing a stack of high-density, spherical buckshot-sized pellets mechanically disbursed at muzzle exit.
“We’re enabling extended range, shotgun-style effects through automatic rifles and machine guns with nothing more than an ammunition change,” said Brian Hoffman, man-portable weapons chief engineer at NSWC Crane. During a recent demonstration at Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh, Ind., DKC achieved a 92 percent success rate against drones.
Colonel Andrew Konicki, program manager of Ground Based Air Defense for Program Executive Officer Land Systems, said the Marine Corps plans to broadly implement the cartridges at the operator level.
“The Drone Killer Cartridge represents a pivotal shift in countering the pervasive threat of enemy drones,” Col. Konicki said. “This type of ammunition provides an immediate and significant improvement to our kinetic kill capabilities by using standard-issued weapons that are already in the hands of Marines.
The collaborative work between NSWC Crane and the Marine Corps has positive impacts across the ecosystem of Homeland Defense as well as self-protection for our forward deployed troops in harm’s way. With DKC, we are adding capability well beyond conventional options, while also bending the cost curve for neutralizing drone threats, particularly to the individual Marine.”
Unmanned systems are reshaping military tactics, challenging established operations and creating life-threatening threats for warfighters. To counter the critical threat, the Department is aiming to improve overall defense capabilities.
“By design, DKC provides broader terminal coverage on and around the intended target, which increases effectiveness against stationary and moving drones by helping offset imperfect aim,” said Hoffman. “There’s a good reason why bird hunters use shotguns. We’ve applied a similar philosophy to killing drones while amplifying overall performance. DKC sub-projectiles exit the barrel at velocities typical of centerfire rifle ammunition. Those velocities, and associated energies, far exceed shotgun capabilities and serve to extend effective range while offering more devastating effects on target.”
DKC was developed from internal NSWC Crane Naval Innovative Science and Engineering (NISE) funding and investments from the Department of Homeland Security and Marine Corps. The load involves only an ammunition change, eliminating new-weapon qualification requirements and accelerates initial fielding. It also removes any requirement that warfighters carry an additional weapon dedicated to countering drones.
“When you compare the cost it takes to kill a drone using DKC versus some other solutions that are being employed, it’s a night-and-day difference,” said Hoffman. “The projectiles used in segmented DKC and pelletized DKC are both inert, meaning there is no energetic material in the projectile itself. The separation mechanisms are purely mechanical, and the cartridge case, primer, and propellant are common to other ammunition types already in production. These attributes combine to help keep it elegantly simple yet effective while ensuring low-cost producibility.”
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Of course you really only trade problems. Like all the relatives that you never knew about that come crawling out of the wood works. Who also now just love & respect you. Grumpy
Things are getting interesting in narco-Mexico…
According to a report in the Atlantic (paywalled, but an archived version is here), the politicians in Mexico who have for years – probably for generations – been bribed and/or cajoled and/or threatened by the drug cartels into turning a blind eye to their criminal activities, appear to be changing their tune.
(BIAS WARNING: The Atlantic is notoriously anti-President Trump and routinely criticizes the policies and actions of his administration. This article appears to be unusually positive, despite that reservation.)
… the governor of the strategically important border state of Baja California was just caught on tape offering to become an FBI informant. The remarkable thing here is that she would not be the first; the list of current and former Mexican officials and drug traffickers who have offered to cooperate with the U.S. government is now lengthy.
. . .
Since his second term began, Trump has periodically threatened military action inside Mexico, alluding to air strikes or operations that would “take out the cartels.” Mexican officials have repeatedly rejected the possibility. “There will be no invasion of Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said last year. But quietly, Mexican officials have discussed what it would mean if they were attacked by their neighbor and largest trading partner. Would it be a special-forces operation, like the one that seized former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro? A drone strike on a fentanyl lab? Some Mexican officials are reading books about the Mexican-American War, searching for historical precedent.
Because the threat of military intervention is so dramatic, not enough attention has been paid to a type of intervention that is already taking place, one that could pave the way for strikes.
In a break with long-standing precedent, American prosecutors have used informants to pursue members of the Mexican government, apparently “moving up the food chain,” as one U.S. official described it to me … Several former Mexican officials facing U.S. charges have turned themselves in, apparently agreeing to cooperate with authorities to reduce their sentences.
Dozens of newly extradited drug traffickers, too, are believed to be cooperating. Their accounts appear to have allowed U.S. investigators to build cases against members of Sheinbaum’s Morena political party. At least four have been indicted. Many more have had their visas revoked.
It’s a high-risk escalation in the Trump administration’s fight against narco corruption—and possibly also a pretext for a unilateral attack. Trump could use evidence of the government’s links to organized crime in an attempt to justify using force in Mexico. This week, the Trump-appointed head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, gave a speech describing “the deadly connection between cartel networks and the Mexican government.”
“They are one [and] the same,” he said.
. . .
Last week, the State Department designated two lesser-known drug cartels—the Juárez Cartel and Los Viagras—as “foreign terrorist organizations” and “specially designated global terrorists.” Some within the Trump administration believe that those designations would offer some kind of legal authority for an attack, though international-law experts largely differ … The campaign against cartel leaders has been so successful that, even if the United States wanted to decapitate a drug-trafficking organization, it’s unclear whom they would target.
There’s more at the link.
This has mostly been taking place “under the wire”, so to speak. We’ve known for years that the entire government structure of Mexico – local, regional and national – is corrupted by drug money from the cartels, who effectively run most of the country.
However, if the cartel leaders, and political leaders, are rendered ineffective (or imprisoned), what’s going to happen to the social fabric of Mexico? So much of it is cartel-corrupted (including almost every element of the police and armed forces, the emergency services, etc.) that ordinary citizens have learned to live without most of the social structure we take for granted.
If the replacement structures of the cartel are suddenly removed, will Mexico survive in its present form?
I think there are three possibilities.
- Mexico will collapse into a “failed state”, with widespread chaos and anarchy. It will be almost impossible for business to function without paying massive bribes to local strongmen, but those strongmen will be at war with each other, so that an effective regional or national government simply won’t be possible.
- Mexico will limp along as it does at present. The cartel structures will continue to use their financial wealth (very considerable, having amassed it over decades) to buy the cooperation of the civil authorities. However, the competition between cartels to take over those resources will devolve into civil war in parts of the country, and will likely spill over into the southern United States. I’d expect southern California, Arizona and New Mexico to become very dangerous areas, even more so than at present. (I daresay Texas will probably cope better than they do, because Texas law enforcement authorities aren’t handcuffed by liberal politicians who’ll do everything in their power to restrict them.)
- Mexico may break into several smaller nation-states, based on divisions that go back centuries. Don’t forget, “modern” Mexico was “created” out of a series of revolutions and civil wars that imposed unity out of the barrel of a gun, and killed anyone who argued with the concept. With the number of guns in circulation there now, it’ll be harder to impose authority in that way.
I could be completely wrong, of course. Time will tell . . .
Peter