Brisbane, Australia -- Further to the Company's announcement earlier today, Metal Storm Limited advises that it was in the process of confirming additional details and completing its usual approval protocol to announce the material that had been received overnight, when it was informed that details of the contract award were available on a US website which the Company does not control. In that circumstance the Company immediately released the facts available.

The Company now provides further detail on the US$1,477,860 contract awarded today to Metal Storm Inc (MSI) by the United States Marine Corps for the Mission Payload Module - Non Lethal Weapon System program.

The Mission Payload Module - Non Lethal Weapon System (MPM-NLWS) is a new weapon system that is to provide the Marine Corps with improved counter-personnel, non-lethal capabilities.

The weapon is to launch a new non-lethal munition that will incapacitate personnel through light, sound and pressure stimuli. It will provide a longer range, greater area coverage, extended duration, and better scalability of effects than current non-lethal weapon systems. It is to be mounted onto the Marine Corps Transparent Armor Gun Shield (MCTAGS), on the HMMWV "Humvee" vehicle.

MSI will be taking advantage of the configurability of its FireStorm(tm) architecture and Metal Storm's unique, patented stacked projectile technology to deliver a lightweight, multi-barrel weapon and munition system to meet the unique needs of the program.

The MPM-NLWS will be used for controlling crowds, denying/defending areas, controlling access and engaging threats. It will incapacitate its targets and provide increased standoff distance for the protection of friendly forces.

The initial award is a Cost Plus Fixed Fee Contract for Technology Development Phase, which will evaluate demonstrated payload effectiveness, munitions fusing/functioning and weapon platform compatibility.

Metal Storm Limited CEO Dr Lee Finniear noted how important this contract was to the Company as it forms part of a funded US DOD weapon procurement program.

"We congratulate MSI on winning this contract against full and open competition", Dr Finniear said. "Metal Storm technology is ideally suited to the delivery of a high volume of munitions from lightweight vehicle mounted launchers, and we believe MSI can deliver a highly differentiated solution to meet MPM-NLWS requirements"

"We understand that if successful the Technology Development Phase will be followed by future phases including the production of MPM-NLWS systems for deployment to warfighters" he said. The contract will be delivered over 12 months. Further information will be released to the market once approval by the customer is received.

Metal Storm
21.04.2010