Investigations on signatures of projectiles for sniper detection applications

In a world, where terrorism is threatening human life in particular that of those forces and civilian personnel who are involved in peace keeping and peace enforcing missions, the defence against snipers is a necessary safety demand. For this purpose sensor systems based upon various principles are in use and still under development. Among those acoustic and electro optical sensors are the most common ones; however their performance is very often limited with respect to their ability to cope with dust, fog and haze, especially in urban terrain. Notably here the millimeter wave radar could offer the additional advantage of small, light weight miniature sensors with the capability to fulfill the demands of an urban environment. As a first step to develop a millimeter wave radar system as a part a multi sensor approach, the signature characteristics of typical sniper projectiles have been investigated. RCS simulations have been conducted, which were validated by measurements under well controlled conditions. The paper gives results from this work and discusses the implications on the design of a respective sniper detection approach.