Citation

Gaston J, Letowski T. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 2010; 127(3): 1765.

Affiliation

Dept. of the Army US Army Res. Lab., US Army Res. Lab., Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005-5066.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Institute of Physics)

DOI

10.1121/1.3383779

PMID

20330116

Abstract

The ability to identify and interpret impulse sounds from small arms weapon fire is a very important element of soldier's situational awareness that is critically needed to avoid potential danger. For example, differentiation of hostile from friendly weapon fire can indicate the need for increased vigilance and can reveal the approximate location of an enemy element. In addition, estimation of weapon size can be used to infer the resources of an enemy element. Despite the potential operational importance of these sounds, little is known about listener perception of impulse weapon sounds. The present work investigates listener ability to differentiate signatures of various small arms based on high-quality recordings of single-shot impulse sounds. Following the three-stage approach developed by Pastore et al. (2008) for studying natural sound perception, the interrelationships between weapon source properties, the physical attributes of the sounds produced and listener perception are evaluated for a number of small arms weapons. The mappings of these relationships provide the basis for developing training techniques for improving listener weapon signature identification ability.

Language: en