Development of the TrueTissue Platform for Non-lethal Weapon Testing and Evaluation

Non-lethal weapons (NLWs), including less-lethal kinetic energy impact munitions, are designed to incapacitate or repel targets with non-penetrating wounds and a low probability of fatality or permanent injury. Rapid market growth has created an intensely competitive effort to develop and commercialize more effective and safer NLWs. Although the benefits of impact munitions are numerous, concern for the deleterious effects that the munitions have on the target when penetration occurs remains. In fact, there have been over 2000 reported penetrating injuries ranging from minor to significant and over 50 deaths from impact munitions in the past 30 years. Unfortunately, NLW safety research and evaluation standards are limited by a lack of universally accepted test protocols or materials to determine the lethality of non-penetrating NLWs with statistical rigor and ensure safe use. To address the critical need for more reliable safety of NLWs and advancement of kinetic energy impact munitions, Luna Innovations is leading the development of TrueTissue, a ballistic testing platform for NLWs.