Remote artillery fuze disarming and interrogation project shortlisted for major awards
21 Sept 22
A novel multi-system process that remotely removes and interrogates fuzes fitted to artillery projectiles and delivers them for re-use or disposal has been shortlisted in two categories of the prestigious Land Forces 2022 Innovation Awards to be presented in Brisbane on 4 October.
Pentarch’s Project Damocles is a finalist in the National Innovation Award and the SME Innovation Award categories.
Their purpose-designed system uses robotic handling and creative use of vision systems and X-ray technology to individually decant artillery rounds from its packaging, de-fuze the projectile and interrogate the arming state of a large quantity of 105mm artillery rounds. All with safety as the priority.
Executive Director, Pentarch, Chris Deighton said he and his team were ‘thrilled’ to be shortlisted.
He described the true innovation of the project as being the ability to bring together numerous technologies to automate something that is not suited to automation and, in doing so, solving a longstanding problem for the Australian Department of Defence.
“We are delighted to be shortlisted in both categories of the Land Forces Awards. We know how difficult it is for SMEs to innovate because of funding and R&D burdens. Developing this solution and working with a range of small business partners across New South Wales and Victoria demonstrates Pentarch’s ability, as an SME ourselves, to create a world class technological solution for the defence industry,” he said.
Because of Pentarch’s experience in creating bespoke systems for demilitarisation and disposal using automation with robotics, the company was asked by Defence to evaluate the possibility of designing and developing an automated process to remotely remediate these explosive items that had the potential to detonate if moved.
No system exists to perform this specific task.
The Pentarch solution involves development and integration of multiple sub systems in a fully automated process that can be transported and assembled at locations where affected items are housed. In this case, the work is conducted at four fully functioning munition depots across New South Wales and Victoria.
The system remotely moves pallets of ammunition within storehouses, automatically conveys those pallets to a process area, removes ammunition boxes from the pallets, removes the ammunition tubes containing the rounds from the boxes, removes the projectile from the inner packaging (tubes), then de-fuzes the round, positioning the fuze for X-ray where it is determined to be in the ‘armed’ or ‘unarmed’ state.
The final step involves the collection of the fuze after interrogation and transporting any ‘armed’ fuze to an area appropriate for disposal.
The range of variations to all aspects of the ammunition presented from pallets to packages and fuze orientations has required daily innovation to mechanical and robotic processes augmented by constant adaptions in the software behind every part of the system.
“Ultimately, the success of this project will not be measured by the number of armed fuzes that are discovered and destroyed,” said Chris. “It will be assessed by achieving the outcome of assessing the state of the fuzes in a way which has eliminated the risk to personnel who handle suspect explosive ordnance.”
The Damocles solution has been in operation since July 2021 under a commercial arrangement with Explosive Materiel Branch, Land Systems Division, Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Department of Defence and will be completed by early 2023.
For more information, contact Chris Deighton, Pentarch Executive Director on 0412 120 062.