During a recent test at Fort Benning, Ga., Raytheon Company's BattleGuard modular weapon station struck targets with every burst of ammunition fired, proving its precision engagement capability under both stationary and moving engagement scenarios.

The maturity of the BattleGuard system was demonstrated at a live-fire exercise on an A3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle by engaging troop and vehicle targets at ranges that approach the maximum effective ranges of the weapon systems.

That allows U.S. Army soldiers and Marines to maximize the standoff between them and the enemy.

Commanders and soldiers were able to watch FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) video during threat detection classification, recognition and identification of stationary and moving targets on a screen at the same time as the weapons hit targets.

The FLIR video, which showed no jitter, allowed the BattleGuard gunner and others to easily identify the targets.

"BattleGuard provides dramatically improved crew and vehicle survivability with 360 degrees of under armor unobstructed coverage, day or night," said Jeff Miller, vice president of Combat and Sensing Systems for Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business.

BattleGuard can be configured to specific missions and is adaptable to future weapon systems, providing precision targeting and effects.

Its modularity supports a number of machine and chain guns, including the M249, M240, M2, MK-19, MK-47, M134 and the M230LF. It also supports hard- or soft-launch missiles such as the TOW, Javelin, Griffin and Stinger, and non-lethal weapons.