Li Shizhen
New Member
SYDNEY (XFN-ASIA) - Metal Storm Ltd, a company that is developing a revolutionary super-fast weapons system has been approached secretly by China in an attempt to secure the technology, the company said.
The weapon, with an electronic firing mechanism which enables it to fire at a rate of up to 1 mln rounds per minute, is partly funded by the United States and Australian governments, a Metal Storm executive said.
'The company confirms that it has received phone calls from a particular individual who it turns out was acting on behalf of the Chinese,' chief operating officer Ian Gillespie said.
Confirmation of the approach comes after inventor Mike O'Dwyer told Nine Network television last week that the Chinese military had offered him more than 100 mln usd to move to Beijing.
O'Dwyer, who left the publicly-listed company some two years ago, said China had been pursuing the technology for several years.
He said a Chinese official told him in a telephone call in which the 100 mln usd dollars were offered: 'We don't need any Metal Storm weapons, we don't need any of the paperwork, none of that.
'What we want is you. We want you and your family in Beijing.'
O'Dwyer said he refused the offer and informed the government in Canberra, which has invested some 10 mln usd in the project.
A spokesman for Defense Minister Brendan Nelson said after the program was broadcast that Australians need not be concerned that the technology or the weapons could be provided to China.
'This will not happen and there are safeguards to prevent it,' he said.
Gillespie said he could not comment on the approaches to O'Dwyer. But he confirmed that about a year ago the company had received several calls on behalf of a man identified in the television program as acting for the Chinese government.
'We are simply confirming that, yes, we had an approach from these people,' Gillespie said.
'It's not an isolated case, but at the same time we didn't consider it a threat or consider it a problem.
'What we're doing is well known -- we have a website and as a public company we're obliged to disclose what we're doing.'
Gillespie said Metal Storm was 'very clearly focused on the US and related markets' and the weapon would not be for sale to China.
The US government had put about 20 mln usd into the weapon's development, along with resources 'of a very high value' such as engineering facilities and firing ranges, he said.
At the very earliest, the weapons, which can be adapted to fire a range of ammunition, could be available in a year's time, with the focus currently on the development of 40 mm grenade launchers.
'We're in the final phases before the product will be available,' he said.
The computer-operated weapons could revolutionize warfare in some respects, Gillespie said, confirming oft-cited reports that the gun can fire at a rate of 1 mln rounds a minute.
But he stressed this was a 'rate of fire' achieved by a test weapon with 32 barrels and did not mean that 1 mln bullets had actually been fired.
Metal Storm's weapons have no moving parts, and projectiles stacked in the barrels are fired electronically, not through the conventional method that uses percussion caps and a firing pin.
'Essentially what the technology does is eliminate all of the mechanical elements of the conventional weapon,' Gillespie said.
