Picatinny lands 3 of the Army’s 10 greatest inventions of 2009

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. — Three tech­nolo­gies devel­oped at Picatin­ny Arse­nal were named among the 10 great­est Army inven­tions for 2009, accord­ing to an announce­ment released by the Army this week.

The M320 40mm Grenade Launch­er has the capa­bil­i­ty to be con­fig­ured as stand-alone sys­tem, mount­ed to the M4 car­bine or the M16 rifle, which great­ly increas­es the small unit tac­ti­cal commander’s flex­i­bil­i­ty to tai­lor the weapon to the mis­sion. Pho­to Cred­it: U.S. Army pho­to. Click to enlarge

The Arma­ment Research, Devel­op­ment and Engi­neer­ing Cen­ter (ARDEC) , the largest engi­neer­ing group at Picatin­ny Arse­nal, col­lab­o­rat­ed with var­i­ous project man­ag­er orga­ni­za­tions here to research, devel­op and field the award-win­ning inventions. 

“The Army’s Great­est Inven­tion awards rep­re­sent the absolute best tech­nolo­gies that help keep our troops safer and enable them to suc­ceed on the bat­tle­field. It’s a tremen­dous hon­or for ARDEC, and our PM team­mates, to receive three of these high­ly-cov­et­ed awards because they are select­ed by Sol­diers — the cus­tomers who depend on our prod­ucts,” said Dr. Ger­ar­do Melen­dez, ARDEC direc­tor. “It’s a tes­ta­ment to the pro­fes­sion­al­ism, inno­va­tion and excel­lence of our peo­ple in Team Picatin­ny, who are the dri­ving force behind all our successes.” 

The award sub­mis­sions were judged by a pan­el of non-com­mis­sioned offi­cers with recent com­bat expe­ri­ence in addi­tion to a pan­el of field grade offi­cers from the Army’s Train­ing and Doc­trine Com­mand. Sub­mis­sions were eval­u­at­ed based on their sig­nif­i­cant impacts to Army capa­bil­i­ties, poten­tial ben­e­fits out­side of the Army, and inventiveness. 

Since the Army Great­est Inven­tions Awards began in 2002, Picatin­ny teams have won 24 of the 80 great­est inven­tions award­ed so far. 

The Picatin­ny teams will be rec­og­nized at the 27th Annu­al Army Sci­ence Con­fer­ence Nov. 29 in Orlan­do, Fla., where they will for­mal­ly be pre­sent­ed with the Army’s Great­est Inven­tions Awards by the Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Army for Research and Technology. 

Picatinny’s three Army Great­est Inven­tions of 2009 are: 

40mm Piv­ot­ing Cou­pling: This device allows Sol­diers to re-link ammu­ni­tion belts to pro­vide a con­tin­u­ous fire capa­bil­i­ty for the MK19 weapon sys­tem, as opposed to the cur­rent one-time, 32-round fir­ing capa­bil­i­ty. By using the new piv­ot­ing design to re-link ammu­ni­tion, Sol­diers are less exposed to unnec­es­sary harm or dan­ger caused by hav­ing to reload their ammu­ni­tion belt after fir­ing 32 rounds. Not only is this device sim­ple to reat­tach (requir­ing no tools or skill), the new M16A2 piv­ot­ing cou­pling will also reduce the sal­vage costs of field ammu­ni­tion. Approved for pro­duc­tion in August 2009, the device is cur­rent­ly a stan­dard issue item for train­ing and com­bat use. The design was co-devel­oped by ARDEC and the Pro­gram Exec­u­tive Office for Ammunition’s Project Man­ag­er for Maneu­ver Ammu­ni­tion Sys­tems (PM-MAS), which over­saw its test­ing and incor­po­ra­tion into production. 

M320 40mm Grenade Launch­er: This grenade launch­er is being field­ed as a replace­ment to the Army’s aging M203 series of grenade launch­ers that mount onto M16 rifles and M4 car­bines. This new launch­er attach­es under the bar­rel of the rifle or car­bine, sim­i­lar to the M203, but can quick­ly con­vert to a stand-alone weapon. It also fea­tures an inte­gral day and night sight­ing sys­tem and a hand-held laser rangefind­er to allow for accu­rate sight­ing and fir­ing dur­ing day and night. Because the M320 bar­rel opens to the side, it is com­pat­i­ble with all stan­dard U.S. 40mm low-veloc­i­ty ammu­ni­tion, as well as longer-than-stan­dard ammo. The unique con­fig­u­ra­tion allows for the inte­gra­tion of future ammu­ni­tion devel­op­ments. The sys­tem also includes a dou­ble action fir­ing trig­ger for improved reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe­ty. The Project Man­ag­er for Sol­dier Weapons field­ed the first Army unit with the M320 in June 2009. 

Objec­tive Weapon Ele­va­tion Kit: In Jan­u­ary of 2008, ARDEC received an urgent request from the 401st Army Field Sup­port Brigade in Afghanistan for a way to safe­ly engage ene­my com­bat­ants fir­ing from super-ele­vat­ed posi­tions. In response to this urgent request, ARDEC uti­lized its rapid acqui­si­tion process and pro­to­type inte­gra­tion facil­i­ty to devel­op, pro­to­type and pro­duce Objec­tive Weapon Ele­va­tion Kits, while engag­ing the Field Assis­tance in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Team 17 to obtain crit­i­cal user feed­back. The sys­tem equips warfight­ers with the capa­bil­i­ty to safe­ly engage ele­vat­ed tar­gets at up to 80 degrees while remain­ing in a pro­tect­ed pos­ture with­in the Objec­tive Gun­ner Pro­tec­tion Kit, which is mount­ed atop var­i­ous com­bat vehi­cles. To date, over 700 sys­tems have been field­ed through the Project Man­ag­er for Mine Resis­tant Ambush Pro­tect­ed Vehi­cles and U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Command. 

About Us: One of the largest employ­ers in North­ern New Jer­sey, the U.S. Army Arma­ment Research, Devel­op­ment and Engi­neer­ing Cen­ter (ARDEC) devel­ops near­ly 90 per­cent of the weapon­ry and ammu­ni­tion used by U.S. warfight­ers across all branch­es of ser­vice. Head­quar­tered at Picatin­ny Arse­nal, N.J., the team of 3,600-plus sci­en­tists, engi­neers and sup­port staff includes satel­lite offices and facil­i­ties in Illi­nois, Mary­land and New York. ARDEC works in direct sup­port of its high­er Army head­quar­ters, the Research, Devel­op­ment and Engi­neer­ing Com­mand, head­quar­tered at Aberdeen Prov­ing Ground, Md.

Source:
Unit­ed States Army 

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