That is precisely what is happening with suppresors for the multitude of weapons that warriors use every day, a technology that also makes it tougher for bad guys to determine the direction of fire aimed at them by allied troops.
SureFire LLC provides suppressors that don’t impair accuracy of firearms, Ron Canfield, public relations manager, said. The superior performance of the SureFire suppressors is a key reason that SOCOM and other armed services have decided to obtain them, he indicated
The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division—the primary solicitation center for U.S. Special Operations Command—awarded SureFire a $23.3 million contract for an indefinite quantity of sound suppressors, suppressor adapters, blank firing adapters and training adapters. The award was part of the family of muzzle brake suppressors contract, following a major suppressor evaluation by the military that focused on criteria including reliability, sound reduction, accuracy, point of impact shift, endurance/durability and operational suitability.
Other services employing SureFire suppressors include the Marine Corps, which uses their FA762SS suppressor system on every M40A5 sniper rifle, Canfield observed.
The key to SureFire suppressors, Canfield said, lies in the fast-attach technology that fastens the silencer to the weapon. Some suppressors attach with a threaded system, and if the threading isn’t precisely straight, that can mean the suppressor isn’t quite straight, affecting accuracy of each round fired, Canfield noted. The fast-attach system ensures the suppressor is mounted in precisely the same way each time, he added.
When the suppressor is mounted so it is straight, the round can avoid striking baffles, or wipes, in the silencer. And even if a round does strike a baffle in a SureFire suppressor, “it won’t deflect the bullet,” Canfield explained, because of a fail-safe feature that SureFire provides. Net result: The round will continue on to the intended target, instead of being deflected to hit something or someone nearby, such as friendly forces.
Joshua Waldron, CEO of Silencerco, said the goal of providing suppressors for every weapon may be achieved next year, thanks to aggressive moves by DoD leaders to obtain suppressors for rifles departmentwide. One key reason is that the government is sustaining staggering losses because of warfighters suffering hearing damage caused by the deafening noise of their own firearms that aren’t equipped with suppressors.
“There’s been $700 million or $800 million a year in VA benefit claims for hearing-loss damage—damage to the ear, [or] tinnitus, ringing in the ear,” Waldron noted. Because that hearing damage is unnecessary, he said, “Every ground troop should have [a suppressor] on their weapon, for more [reasons] than just hearing protection. But hearing protection, by far—it’ll pay for itself 100 times over.”
Another reason to muffle the sound of a soldier’s weapon as he fires it repeatedly is that the hearing loss caused by firearms lacking suppressors also makes post-traumatic stress syndrome more difficult to resolve, Waldron said.
“Post-traumatic stress is heightened if there’s ringing in the ear,” he explained. “These guys are coming back from the war and they’re trying to go through counseling to get back in the everyday life and get rid of their … PTSD. And they’re actually having a harder time doing that, because of the constant reminder of ringing in the ear.”
Another approach to the hearing loss problem is to provide hearing protection systems to combatants, and several companies make such systems. They typically involve ear buds, tiny sound system speakers that are worn in the ear canal, blocking out damaging noises such as the report of a warfighters’ weapon, or the deafening drone of a military vehicle on an hours-long ride toward an objective.
And some systems include micro microphones that allow combatants to hear conversations and other noises around them—including the sound of gunfire coming from an enemy sniper. Multiple mics can help to pinpoint the direction of the sound.
But Waldron challenged those systems, alleging they don’t work well. “The problem with the buds in the ear … you have no idea of the direction of the sound, because the function of the ear, and the natural design of the ear, is how you’re able to triangulate the sound.”
Without ear buds, Waldron asserted, a soldier can better determine the direction from which enemy gunfire originates. And because of that, he said, many warfighters don’t wear the ear buds they are provided.
“They usually take them right off,” he said, “because they can’t hear—they don’t understand their surroundings, their environment. Their situational awareness is completely out the window if those ear buds go in. And the really high-tech [ear buds] have microphones that compress all the sound. Those are even worse, because all of the sound comes in at the same volume. And so you have no idea of the distance or direction of the sound. So, the worst thing that you can do is to wear hearing protection if you’re a soldier.”
Without ear buds, the human ear and brain perform an intricate, instantaneous calculus to locate the origin of noises, he said. “Your brain does something really amazing,” Waldron explained. “And that is, just from experience, it catalogs the sound. You’ll actually be able to understand how far away the shot came from, whether it was 100 yards or 1,000 yards, just because of the echoes from the sonic crack going through the air, all that kind of stuff. A seasoned pro will be able to tell where the bullet’s coming from, and how far it is away, just by listening. So it’s pretty important” to have the ear able to perform its work.
If warfighters choose not to wear ear buds, then the remaining alternative for protecting their hearing is to equip their weapons with suppressors, Waldron indicated. Whatever suppressors cost, he added, that outlay is a tiny fraction of the expense of dealing with hearing loss among thousands of combatants.
That may be something that the Super Committee in Congress will have to weigh as it considers how to make hundreds of billions of dollars of cuts in defense spending: whether a cut in one area will result in far higher spending in another.
At this point, Silencerco doesn’t have a contract with the military, although some special operators—Navy SEALs—are using Silencerco suppressors, Walden said. The company is attempting to ramp up operations so it will be able to bid for military contracts, in addition to the work it is doing now to provide suppressors for government and law enforcement weapons.
“Right now, we’re a brand-new company,” he explained. “We actually formed our company in 2008, and so we have several government agencies using our suppressors. But we really haven’t gotten into the military. As of now, we’ve sent some [suppressors] to the SEALs. But that’s as far as we’ve gone. Basically, what’s happening is we started our company with a certain product to get recognition and to get clout, and we’ve been able to expand very quickly. And we haven’t actually been able to start going after those military contracts yet, because we’ve been up to a year backlogged in just providing for civilian, law enforcement and government agencies. We haven’t stepped over that threshold yet, to be able to ramp up for” military contracts. “But we’ve geared our company up to where we can start to do that very soon, and get some of those [military] contracts. We’ve been heavily developing our products for the military, and we’re going to be pushing into that field very soon.”
Waldron also said Silencerco suppressors handle gases from a bullet very well, slowing them down to the point where the bullet leaves the weapon before the gases. He also said slowing down gases means that if you are firing your weapon while in the prone position, there is no problem with gases from the shots kicking up dust and betraying your position to the enemy.
Smith Enterprise
Smith Enterprise makes suppressors that are different, John Bainer, federal support coordinator, said. The Enterprise Vortex Flash Eliminator suppressor is “100 percent maintainable by the individual soldier,” he noted. A special operator can disassemble the suppressor, clean it and reassemble it, he said. In contrast, the typical suppressor is welded permanently together, so it can’t be cleaned and carbon builds up inside—causing the sound of the weapon firing to become progressively louder.
Another positive is that in the rare instance when a Smith Enterprise suppressor has a problem, there is no need to send it back to the factory and wait for a replacement silencer to be shipped back to the military unit at half price, Bainer said. Rather, he stressed, if there is a problem, Smith will ship a rebuild kit to the unit at one-third the price of a silencer. And even that rarely happens. A unit using Smith Enterprise suppressors was in theater in Afghanistan “for a whole year, and we never got one back,” Bainer recalled.
Smith suppressors are mounted on the M4, M14, M16, the .240 machine gun, the M249 machine gun, the .30 caliber and other weapons, Bainer said. They also are in use by the Army and Navy. For example, Smith Enterprise recently was tapped to provide suppressors for special operators. Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center announced an award to Smith Enterprise of a contract for the patented Vortex Flash Eliminator. This will be a five-year, $1.5 million contract. That award came after the silencer was rated the number one suppressor in a developmental test report, according to Smith Enterprise. Crane is the testing and contracting division for the U.S. Special Operations Command.
The rigid testing performed by Crane showed that the Vortex Eliminator was superior to other models, easily passing the 95 percent flash reduction threshold through 10,000 rounds of machine gun fire, a feat extremely difficult to duplicate, according to Smith Enterprise. During the extensive level of examination the Vortex was also proven to not interfere with normal combat functions, alter weapon firing or cycling, or interfere with mechanical sight. Hazard analysis, visual flash analysis, hardness testing, drop testing, vibration testing, rust resistance testing and measurement testing were also conducted, and Smith Enterprise suppressors passed all standards, Bainer noted. The Vortex is the only flash hider with a helical flute design that breaks up the flash at multiple locations and angles in the suppressor. This contrasts with the straight flute design used by other manufacturers and allows the Vortex to reduce more flash, making troops safer in combat situations, he said.
Quicksilver Manufacturing
Quality shows when a product lasts year after year. That is the basic tenet for Quicksilver Manufacturing LLC, where Jay J. Quilligan, M.D., is the managing member. Quicksilver suppressors are being tested by special operators and other warriors.
Quilligan explained why that outlook makes Quicksilver suppressors singular gear for warfighters: Better materials yield longer life for a suppressor. “We were the first company to start using titanium alloy in the regular production of rifle suppressors,” he said. “Our first 5.56 [mm] suppressors came out in 2002. In fact some of these units I personally know are still in service, and at least one I know of has 100,000 rounds through it.”
Titanium also yields weight savings, he said. “The use of titanium has made these suppressors ultra light and long-lasting,” he explained. “The standard 5.56 unit weighs just 9.6 ounces and adds only 7.5 ounces when the flash hider is removed.”
Quicksilver as well sees superior quality in a screw-on mount. But some users want the convenience and speed of a different mount.
“We have always felt that the screw-on mount is more stable and accurate for the suppressor, and time has borne this out,” Quilligan said. But the customer must be heard. “We have, however, bowed to military and law enforcement pressure and recently released a quick-attach version that mounts directly to the A-2 birdcage flash suppressor,” he continued. “That has undergone extensive military testing and is currently being tested by special forces. It has been field tested by government also and the initial feedback was extremely positive, although they’ve not yet sent their written evaluation.”
Other Quicksilver suppressors too, are doing well in tests. “We have also recently had military field testing on our 338 magnum suppressor mounted on the 338 Extreme rifle,” he added. “Early reports are that it was extremely effective in reducing noise and that there was no muzzle flash detected.” In other testing, “We have … recently submitted for special forces testing a thread mount suppressor for the M240 machine gun and hope to hear results shortly.”
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