Soldiers To Get Individual Gunshot Detectors

I really liked the flick Red Dawn when I was kid and the things I learned from it include that you can pee in a radiator and as long as you only shoot one time, the enemy can't find you. That last bit isn't true anymore thanks to a cool new tool that the Army is sending to troops in Afghanistan. The tool is called the Individual Gunshot Detector and it is sort of like radar for gunshots.

Some cities have a similar system that can triangulate where a gunshot comes from so police can respond. The solider system will allow the combatant to know what direction a shot came from so they can take cover rather than trying to figure out where the shot originated as the enemy is lining up the second shot.

The IGD is made by QinetiQ in North America and has four small sensors that pick up the sound of the gunshot and then it displays the position of the shot on a small LCD screen. The Army has 13,000 of these things heading to Afghanistan already. Over the next year up to 1500 of them will be deployed each month.