Boomerang (countermeasure)

Boomerang is a gunfire locator developed by DARPA and BBN Technologies primarily for use against snipers. Boomerang is mounted on mobile vehicles such as the Humvee, Stryker, and MRAP combat vehicles. There were plans to integrate it into the Land Warrior system.

Boomerang grew out of a program conceived by the U.S. Department of Defense in late 2003, months after the traditional combat phase of the Iraq War had ended on 1 May, at a time when it was clear that U.S. troops were increasingly at risk from a growing and aggressive insurgency. Often, troops in noisy Humvees did not know they were being shot at until someone was hit. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approached DARPA and asked for near-term solutions that could be applied to the conflict in Iraq. Rumsfeld was looking for something that did not have to be a perfect solution, but was at least better than nothing.

The U.S. Army and Special Operations Command began using a limited number of French-made PILAR anti-sniper systems in 2003. DARPA developed an American system. Karen Wood, a program manager at DARPA, said BBN's previous work was the most impressive that was examined. BBN had previously developed a less sophisticated counter sniper system named "Bullet Ears" under DARPA sponsorship in 1997.

The new requirements included:

The first prototype was developed in 65 days. Challenges that it faced were filtering out noise from the vehicle on which it is mounted (such as loud engines and static sounds from the radio), ignoring sounds similar to that of a gunshot (such as fireworks or a car back-firing), factoring in bullet ricochets, and ignoring outgoing fire from friendly troops. Small quantities of Boomerang were battle tested in Iraq and further improvements led to 2nd and 3rd generation versions called the Boomerang II and Boomerang III. In June 2008 a $73.8 million firm fixed price contract was awarded by the U.S. Army to BBN for 8,131 Boomerang Systems, spares and training services.

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