Abstract
A flash bang is a non-lethal explosive device that delivers intensely loud bangs and bright lights to suppress potentially dangerous targets. It is usually used in crowd control, hostage rescue and numerous other missions. We construct a model for assessing quantitatively the risk of hearing loss injury caused by multiple flash bangs. The model provides a computational framework for incorporating the effects of the key factors defining the situation and for testing various sub-models for these factors. The proposed model includes 1) uncertainty in the burst point of flash bang mortar, 2) randomness in the dispersion of multiple submunitions after the flash bang mortar burst, 3) decay of acoustic impulse from a single submunition to an individual subject along the ground surface, 4) the effective combined sound exposure level on an individual subject caused by multiple submunitions at various distances from the subject, and 5) randomness in the spatial distribution of subjects in the crowd. With the mathematical model formulated, we seek to characterize the overall effect of flash bang mortar in the form of an effective injury area. We carry out simulations to study the effects of uncertainty and randomness on the risk of hearing loss injury of the crowd. The proposed framework serves as a starting point for a comprehensive assessment of hearing loss injury risk, taking into consideration all realistic and relevant features of flash bang mortar. It also provides a platform for testing and updating component models.
Highlights
In recent years, armed gangs, militias, and terrorist cells have become more prevalent in modern asymmetric conflict and irregular warfare
We study the hearing loss injury risk of a crowd caused by multiple submunitions dispersed from a flash bang mortar round
We carry out simulations to calculate the fraction of injured caused by a flash-bang mortar of ns = 20 submunitions on a crowd of nc subjects uniformly distributed in a circle of diameter dc. We will examine both the average fraction of injured (RSI) and Monte Carlo samples of the actual injury fraction based on individual realizations of flash bang mortar burst location, submunitions dispersion and crowd subjects distribution
Summary
In recent years, armed gangs, militias, and terrorist cells have become more prevalent in modern asymmetric conflict and irregular warfare. Military forces today must be able to execute missions across a large range of military operations. This spans from stability operations, disaster response and humanitarian assistance to full-scale armed combat. Non-lethal weapons can allow for tailored responses to targets and situations across this continuum and can provide commanders the flexibility with escalation-of-force options to minimize civilian casualties and collateral property damage [2]. A flash bang munition is a non-lethal explosive device that emits a dazzling flash of light and a thunderous noise impulse to temporarily disorient the senses of affected individual subjects. The US military is developing a long range non-lethal mortar round that delivers a flash bang payload. We first describe the model components for constructing a comprehensive modeling framework
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