OWL ammo will be all tracers but invisible to the enemy

The ultimate goal is to replace the tracer rounds with the OWL rounds and, potentially, put OWL on the back of every ball round. Since it is anticipated that OWL will be applied to all ball rounds, effectively making ball rounds trace without the need of a cavity, they will all have the same trajectory. And since the shooter can see the exact trajectory of where their round is heading, they can quickly make adjustments to get on target faster. Photo: US Army by Reece Lodder.

Aug 6, 2014 defense-update.com

Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are researching a way to develop a tracer round that will be visible to the shooter in daylight and night time but would remain invisible to the enemy at night.

Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are researching a way to develop a tracer round that will be visible to the shooter in daylight and night time but would remain invisible to the enemy at night.

Tracer rounds, which are usually loaded as every fifth round in machine gun belts, provide essential information to Soldiers firing at an enemy target by creating a line-of-sight that allows them to track the trajectory of their bullets and adjust their aim. However, the pyrotechnic streak they emit also gives away the shooter’s location by allowing the enemy to follow the line of pyrotechnic back to the shooter.

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