Summary Briefing on Manufacturing Technology for the APOBS (Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System)

The primary emphasis of this study was to develop less expensive alternative grenade attachment concepts, which offer better fabrication and performance reliability than the current rope and band assembly. To this end, this study comprised four interrelated tasks 1 alternative attachment concept development, 2 computer modeling dynamic structural analysis, 3 prototype fabrication and testing, and 4 manufacturing process development and cost analysis. Early in the project, after detailed review of the entire TDP, we began to suspect that the grenade attachment scheme may be only one of several significant system cost drivers. For this reason, the system cost analysis was expanded early to include a detailed assessment of other component and subassembly costs. This approach permitted the alternative grenade attachment concepts developed in this study to be evaluated with respect to other significant cost reducing and reliability enhancing modifications.