FEATURE ARTICLE

February 2001

Non-Lethal Rounds Tough to Mass Produce

Industry would like common standards for commercial and military ammo

by Stephen Willingham

Growing involvement by U.S. military forces in humanitarian and peacekeeping missions around the world has fueled the demand for non-lethal munitions in recent years.

Manufacturers, however, are struggling to adapt non-lethal ammunition—fired in 12-gauge shotguns—to mass-production techniques, said Eduard L. Lilliott, chief executive officer and vice president of Ordnance Technology Associates (OTA), headquartered in Perry, Fla.

OTA, a subcontractor for Technical Solutions Group, in Charleston, S.C., is one of a handful of manufacturers supplying non-lethal munitions to the military services.

The firm makes three different types of non-lethal munitions for the U.S. Marine Corps, Coast Guard and civilian law enforcement agencies. Within the industry, these munitions—bean bag, rubber fin stabilized and peacekeeper—are called kinetic-impact rounds, which means they are intended to stun individuals, not maim or kill them, noted Lilliott, a ballistics chemist who retired from a 25-year career at Olin Corp.-Winchester, of East Alton, Ill.

He gave National Defense a tour of his small plant’s operation in rural north Florida.

A beanbag is a small cotton sack, filled with steel pellets, in this case, number-four buckshot. After being stitched shut, the bag is packed into a 12-gauge shotgun shell.

The rubber fin is a light, plastic, bullet-shaped projectile with stabilizing fins on the back to promote short-range accuracy.

The peacekeeper round is used for marking individuals who are believed to be leaders or instigators. It is a light, plastic projectile that is filled with a durable, ultra-violet paint. Once an individual has been hit, he or she can be apprehended later, when there isn’t a volatile crowd watching.

Even if the paint has been seemingly scrubbed off, suspects can be identified, by scanning them, as much as seven days later, with a black light, Lilliott said. He vouched for the tenacity of the UV paint because he has tried it on himself.

The peacekeeper is the first non-lethal round that OTA made, said Eva C. Jones, chief financial officer and president of the firm. Jones developed the mold design and the manufacturing process for the peacekeeper.

When OTA started in 1995, no established database existed for making non-lethal rounds, Jones explained. The firm’s first attempts, using paint-ball technology, didn’t work well, she noted. Nevertheless, she said, OTA eventually attained success by continued experiments with a wide variety of rubber and plastic-based materials.

One of the biggest hurdles that manufacturers face is being held to a standard two and three-quarter-inch shell, said Lilliott. Most shotguns made today come with a three-inch chamber, which is where a round sits when it is fired. Holding manufacturers to a two and three-quarter shell gives any kind of projectile a quarter of an inch “to bounce around in” before it goes down the barrel of the gun, Lilliott explained.

“The bean bag is okay, because of the way it is shaped,” continued Lilliott. “It’s heavy enough to do what it’s supposed to. But projectiles like the peacekeeper or the rubber fin are more of a problem. These projectiles will gyrate [in the chamber] and act like they don’t know what they are doing.”

Problems arise because this quarter-inch void compounds a loss of propellant pressure when a round is discharged, said Lilliott. “This is not a problem in a regular [lethal] round,” he said. “If I lose five or 10 percent of my pressure, I’m not in much trouble. However, losing five or 10 percent with reduced psi [pounds per square inch] means I’m in trouble.

“This makes the round unpredictable. [The projectile] could catch the gases and go one way or another. Or it could catch the gases just right and do what it is supposed to do. There is no way of predicting it.”

Using a rigid wad, which sits on top of the projectile, helps solve this problem, he said. A hard top wad keeps the projectile more tightly compressed and helps maximize gases when a round is fired, Lilliott explained.

Normally, the top wad for a shotgun shell is made from a softer, more pliable material, said Lilliott. But a soft top wad in a non-lethal round is no good because it allows gases and the projectile to float around too much. “For non-lethals, this just won’t do,” he said. “What we are using is not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got for now.”

If the military services allowed manufacturers to go to a standard three-inch shell, “this would solve a large part of our reliability problems,” Lilliott suggested.

Because of a reduced charge, non-lethals tend to perform differently in various shotguns, said Lilliott. For example, rounds made for the Mossberg 590—the current Marine weapon—don’t function well in the Remington 870 used by the U.S. Coast Guard. The solution is to create a “hotter load for the Remington” to duplicate the same result that can be had from a Mossberg.

“However, Remington rounds are excellent performers in Mossbergs,” Lilliott said. “The problem is this: You’re firing guns that weren’t designed to shoot low-pressure [ordnance] and using components that certainly weren’t designed for low pressure.”

Most of these performance variations result from a slightly bigger chamber and barrel diameter size, Lilliott explained. These cannot be discerned by the naked eye.

A lethal shotgun shell fires at 12,500 psi, according to Lilliott. “That’s with a 15-grain charge.”

Non-lethals fire at lower levels, using four grains of powder. The peacekeeper fires at 2,000 psi, the bean bag at 2,500 psi and the rubber fin stabilized at less than 900 psi, said Lilliott.

In addition, these lower pressure rounds create what Lilliott called “a free-air problem,” that occurs inside the round. Combined with the extra space in the chamber, free-air uses up valuable but limited propellant that ultimately reduces accuracy.

“There’s enough air in there to scuba dive for a month,” Lilliott joked. “There’s not enough weight and resistance for all of the powder to burn.” For this reason, he said, OTA buys the hottest powder that it can find. OTA’s supplier is St. Marks Powder, Inc., in nearby St. Marks, Fla.

This combustion problem is caused by a lack of propellant volume that leaves a one-sixteenth-inch void between the load and the top wad, Lilliott said. Under normal circumstances, “nobody loads four grains of powder.”

Getting More Burn
“It’s a constant daily struggle to get more burn from a load,” Lilliott complained. “The most minute things affect the performance of these rounds, for instance, if the crimp [closing the end of the shell] is a little different or if there is a slight deviation in the wad. No matter what, we still have to have a product that can fire and hit something with a fair degree of accuracy.”

Even a different weave in the bean bag can affect velocity, Lilliott said.

Consequently, OTA had to produce custom-made shells for various types of shotguns. Besides Mossberg and Remington, Lilliott hinted that OTA might soon be making non-lethal rounds for a third variety of firearm—the Ithaca shotgun deployed by the Los Angeles County Police Department.

Barrel length also must be taken into consideration, Lilliott said. Military shotguns have shorter barrels than commercial guns. “A longer commercial barrel can cause a 50-foot velocity drop,” he said. “If you are only firing 200 feet [like the rubber fin], that presents a significant problem.”

Lilliott and Jones purchase standard commercial shotguns from their local K-Mart and cut down the barrels to make them conform to military specifications. Every time they do so, they must notify the local sheriff’s department that they have an illegal gun on the premises.

During a recent meeting with Marine officials in Charleston, S.C., Lilliott learned that the Corps is transitioning from the Mossberg shotgun to the new Joint Service Combat Shotgun (JSCS), developed by Benelli Armi S.p.A of Urbino, Italy, for the German small-arms manufacturer, Heckler & Koch Inc.

The JSCS comes with a three-inch chamber, 18.5-inch barrel with optional screw-in choke tubes and a no-tools-needed, exchangeable 14-inch barrel. Over four years, the Marines expect to buy up to 20,000 JSCS units, at $1,100 per gun, said a Marine official.

The JSCS can be operated in semi-automatic mode with conventional ammo. But non-lethal munitions won’t work on semi-automatic, because they don’t produce enough gas to operate the ejection and reloading system, Lilliott said. For non-lethals, the JSCS can be cycled manually, using an extended bolt handle.

“We asked them [Marines] if we could get one [Benelli] for testing, and we got a quick ‘no,’” he said. “How am I supposed to redesign a round for a shotgun that I can’t get?”

However, Benelli is planning to issue a commercial model soon, which should solve this portion of the testing problem for OTA, Lilliott said.

Lilliott wonders what the Marines are going to do with the Mossberg rounds that they have stockpiled. During the past several years, OTA has made about 225,000 non-lethal rounds, mostly for the Marines. “What’s going to happen when they start firing Mossberg rounds in a Benelli?” he asked.

In the future, Lilliott predicted, all rounds will be certified in a Remington barrel, thus establishing a standard non-lethal round—something that Lilliott says he has pushed for all along.

Even though the Remington requires a somewhat hotter load, there is room to bump up the power, without running the risk of killing or seriously wounding anyone, Lilliott said.

Although the Benelli now comes with a standard three-inch chamber, Lilliott speculated that there may be a shift to a three-and-a-half inch chamber.

If the change is made, OTA will adapt, said Jones. “Every customer wants different rounds for different situations,” she said.

Other companies that make non-lethal rounds face the same problems, Lilliott said. “Until there is some kind of accepted standard, there are too many variables to go to a fully automated production system.”

One source of concern is the possibility that people might be killed by non-lethal ammunition. The best way to prevent that it is for shooters to maintain the correct distance between themselves and their targets, Lilliott said.

“The police have what they call a 21-foot rule as a gauge for using non-lethal force against a person wielding a knife,” he said. The non-lethal round was developed to subdue, not to kill people.

In military peacekeeping operations, the idea is to keep crowds under control. For that reason, OTA performs the 15-foot Ballistic Jell Penetration Test. Using a bucket as a mold, Jones mixes a batch of off-the-shelf gelatin and then allows the concoction to set in a refrigerator. After the gelatin has solidified, she takes it out and dresses it in a white T-shirt, as required for the test.

The mold simulates the pliable and shock-absorbent characteristics of the human body, said Jones. With a steel tape, Lilliott and his assistant measure off 15-feet. Then, the firing begins. Between each shot, another assistant tags, measures and records how far each round penetrated into the jell target.

As soon as a peacekeeper hits the jell, its momentum drops to nearly zero, Lilliott explained. “It blows up on impact, which is what it is supposed to do.”

A red paint stain on the white T-shirt is proof that the peacekeeper worked.

The penetration limit for the bean bag is 2.5 inches into the jell, Lilliott said. For the rubber fin, it is 2 inches, and for the peacekeeper, the limit is 1.75 inches. During jell penetration tests, the bean bag almost always hits the jell on one of its harder stitched edges.

“If you are too close and hit a person in the wrong part of the body, like the temple area of the head, you could kill that person,” Lilliott said.

Velocity and pressure tests are performed in a customized firing room, where a projectile is checked in flight by a series of sensors that are wired to a computer that stores the results in a database.

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