Control Products seeks patent for anti-RPG parachute

Published 28 November 2006

System is launched from rocket tubes attached to a vehicle or arrayed around a perimeter; Kevlar parachutes snag incoming RPGs; reloading as simple as replacing rockets

Rocket-propelled grenades are one of the biggest threats facing both the defense and commercial sectors. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, face them regularly, and earlier this year Swiss intelligence agencies uncovered a terrorist cell plotting to strike an Israeli plane with an RPG rocket while it was taking off. Not suprisingly, a number of new counter-technologies have been develop. Earlier this year we reported on one of them, dubbed Trophy, which uses radar to track incoming threats and then destroys them with a beam of fragments. The details about Trophy were top secret, but we can tell our readers about a competing technology: a rapidly deployed parachute currently being patented by New Jersey-based Control Products.

Relying on radar for early warning, the Control Products’ system uses a large number of rockets — mounted on a vehicle or stationed around a perimeter — to deploy a series of braking parachutes made out of Kevlar. The wide mesh permits air through, so that the rocket can fly, but once in the air is strong enough to trap an RPG. With many in the air at once, it is said to resemble “a giant flying fishing net.” To reload the system, a fresh batch of rockets is stuffed down the launch tubes.

-read more in this New Scientist report