"The Economist" Article on New Weapons Technologies

[Rorge Retson]

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590764-arms-control-new-technologies-make-it-easier-track-small-arms-and-stop-them?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/pe/killswitchesandsafetycatches

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Smart weapons
Kill switches and safety catches

Arms control: New technologies make it easier to track small arms and stop them working under certain circumstances. To what extent can they prevent the unintended or undesirable use of weapons?

Nov 30th 2013 | From the print edition Perishable weapons

[Rorge Retson]

Part II

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Another alternative to GPS transmitters would be to track weapons by outfitting them with the inexpensive SIM cards that allow mobile-phone networks to identify subscribers. A weapon would communicate with nearby mobile-network towers to indicate its position within a rough area, says Mr Kalbusch. And a system of this sort could, in theory, form the basis of a “remote control” feature, allowing weapons to be disabled from a distance.

“Kill switches” or “backdoors”, as these features are sometimes known, have so far been associated with expensive weapon systems that must send and receive data to operate. David Kay, America’s most senior arms inspector in post-Saddam Iraq, has noted that one of the reasons why Russia’s best air-defence systems have not been installed in Iran is probably because the Iranians fear that Russia might be capable of countermanding missile launches against certain countries’ aircraft. Now similar “override” systems are being applied to small arms, too.

TriggerSmart, a company based in Limerick, Ireland, has developed a motorised mechanism that can block or unblock the trigger of an assault rifle. It is controlled not by a switch on the weapon itself, but rather by a command sent from an aircraft, satellite, mobile-network tower or radio station. Weighing less than 30 grams (including a standard AAA battery), the mechanism allows an “offending weapon” to be remotely disabled, says Patrick O’Shaughnessy, TriggerSmart’s head of research and development. It costs about $150 to retrofit an existing rifle or build the technology into a new one.

The biggest buyers, Mr O’Shaughnessy reckons, will be armies that work with foreign security forces. American officials have expressed interest. One in six of the Western troops killed last year in Afghanistan was slain in an “insider attack” by a partner in the country’s security forces. TriggerSmart’s technology could allow any member of a unit to block the use of firearms by partner forces. But being expected to use weapons that can be remotely disabled hardly seems likely to engender trust. And it would be impractical to introduce light-weaponry override systems in their current form for large numbers of soldiers or police, says Richard Rowe, a retired US Army major-general who oversaw the instruction and equipping of 550,000 Iraqi security recruits.

Even with further technological advances, few armies will be eager to adopt such kit, Mr Kalbusch says. Governments would worry that their arsenals could be neutered by an adversary, or, more straightforwardly, by the country that supplied the arms. Attempts to mandate use of the technology seem unlikely to succeed, because small arms are made in many countries. And sometimes foreign powers want rebels to steal a government’s weapons and use them against it, as Western-supported opponents of Libya’s Qaddafi regime did in 2011.

“Personalised firearms will fire only when held by the owner or another authorised person.”

Away from the battlefield, other arms-control technologies are being developed to prevent the unintended or unauthorised use of weapons belonging to civilians or police officers. In the decade to 2010, 1,217 American minors were killed in accidental shootings, according to the most recent data from the Centres for Disease Control. And it is not uncommon for a police officer to be shot with a service weapon that has been wrested away.

Accordingly, new “personalised” firearms are being developed which fire only when held by the owner or another authorised person, with the specific aim of preventing a gun owner (and his family or co-workers) from being killed with his own weapon. Because the verification takes place within the weapon itself, its backers note, the technology is more likely to be accepted than remote-override features on military weapons.

Such “smart guns” were discussed by diplomats, gunmakers and other experts at SmartCon, an arms-control conference held in Berlin in June, organised by the German foreign office and the Bonn International Centre for Conversion, a non-profit group that promotes demilitarisation and development. One example is a .22-calibre pistol called iP1 (pictured below), made by Armatix, a German firm. It only fires if the shooter is wearing a special wristwatch containing an RFID chip, which is detected by the gun. If the gun is more than 40 centimetres from the RFID chip, its trigger locks. Attempting to disable the trigger lock destroys the iP1 “irrevocably”, according to Maximilian Hefner, the firm’s boss. The list price is $1,699.

A similar system for shotguns, called M-2000, has been developed by iGun Technology Corporation, based in Florida. When an RFID chip embedded in a ring is brought near the shotgun, a solenoid switch instantly unlocks the trigger. (Alternatively, the chip could be surgically implanted in the owner’s hand.) The system is seamless, according to Jonathan Mossberg, the firm’s founder. “You pick up the gun, pull the trigger, it goes boom—no thought involved,” he says. The battery inside the gun that powers the RFID reader lasts for more than eight years, and it sounds a warning alarm after six years. It costs about $200 to add to a firearm.

A wristwatch or a ring could be stolen, however, so other smart guns rely instead on biometric characteristics of their owner’s body, such as a fingerprint. The New Jersey Institute of Technology has devised a personalised Beretta pistol. When its magnetic trigger is pulled past a sensor in the trigger guard, a chip is switched on to crunch data from pressure-sensing piezoelectric sensors in the handgrip. Only if they match the owner’s bone geometry and “grip dynamics” does the trigger unlock. All this happens within the tenth of a second it takes to pull the trigger all the way back. The system is not foolproof: on average, around 1% of people with the same hand size will be able to fire a gun personalised for a particular user. But a gun set up for an adult cannot be fired by a child. The US Army is testing the system at an armaments laboratory in Picatinny, New Jersey.

Firearms that are unlocked with a fingerprint reader have been developed by Kodiak Industries, based in Utah, and Safe Gun Technology, based in Georgia. Biomac Systems, a firm based in Los Angeles, California and Ferlach, Austria, is designing a biometric kit to retrofit pistols. Barack Obama has encouraged the development of such technologies and has directed America’s attorney general to review them. Smart-gun technology also received a boost last year when it won the fictional endorsement of James Bond in “Skyfall”. Issued a gun coded to his palmprint that only he can fire, Bond is told that it is “less of a random killing machine, more of a personal statement”.

Technology for tyrants?

And yet demand looks weak, especially in America, by far the biggest market for civilian firearms: the iGun M-2000 failed to sell at all. Maxim Popenker, an author of firearm reference books based in St Petersburg, Russia, observes that sooner or later a bad guy will shoot a good guy because the latter’s personalised gun refuses to fire due to “gloves, dirt, sweat, blood or stress”. Gun enthusiasts have raised similar objections: personalised smart guns are simply less effective for self-defence, they argue, because of the risk that the safety technology will fail to work properly. Triggers could be unlocked by voice, but this risks betraying the position of someone hiding.

Echoing an attitude shared by many gun enthusiasts, David Codrea, an editor at Guns magazine, cautions that “stupid electronic doodads” could render a firearm useless, would be ignored by criminals and would raise the price of firearms for everyone else. Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation in Connecticut notes that owners of “authorised-user-only” firearms might be lulled into letting others handle them carelessly. He rejects the term “smart guns” because “it’s people who are dumb or smart”. Some gun owners are also predictably suspicious of technologies like TriggerSmart’s “wide-area control” system that could use an encrypted wireless signal to disable smart guns in schools, airports and other areas. An editorial on BearingArms.com, a pro-gun website, in August called smart guns “a dumb idea” and said the ability to disable them was a “technology for tyrants” that would give governments a monopoly on the use of force.

Such concerns present a big obstacle to the adoption of smart firearms. Indeed, “immense pressure” and boycotts from pro-gun groups persuaded many firms to abandon development of smart weapons, says Wolfgang Bindseil, an arms-control official at the German foreign office. Gunmakers that gave up include Metal Storm in Australia, FN Herstal in Belgium, and Colt, Smith & Wesson and Taurus International Manufacturing in America.

Mr Mossberg of iGun wonders whether attitudes will change as fingerprint readers in smartphones (including the latest iPhone) and wireless key fobs for cars become more widespread and are shown to be reliable. Whether that is just wishful thinking may soon become apparent. Despite protests from gun-rights groups, New Jersey passed a law in 2002 that requires all non-antique guns sold in the state to be smart, starting about three years after the attorney-general determines that the technology is up to snuff and for sale. That countdown could begin soon: smart pistols made by Armatix arrived in American gun shops in November 2013. Arms-control technologies face formidable opposition to adoption on the battlefield, but will now have a chance to prove themselves in the marketplace.

From the print edition: Technology Quarterly

[MontClaire]

Well, come to my home and try to install the chip.....I'll show you where..

[Movin&Shakin]

negative no matter what