M7 Spider

The M7 Spider is a networked United States anti-personnel munitions system that lets an operator remotely command and control a field of hand-placed munitions from as far as 1,500 meters away, developed by Alliant Techsystems and Textron Systems under the Non-Self-Destruct Alternative program to replace the older Matrix remote trigger used with mines such as the M18 Claymore. A Spider field is built from Munition Control Units linked to a Remote Control Station through communication repeaters, with up to 63 control units per station and each unit able to arm six grenade launchers covering 60-degree arcs; a tripwire pulled in the field sends a wireless alert to the operator, who then decides whether to fire rather than the trap firing on its own. The system was originally built with both an operator-fired mode and a victim-activated mode, but was permanently reconfigured in 2004 into a man-in-the-loop-only weapon, eliminating victim activation, to bring it into line with United States national landmine policy.