U.S. Army awards $1.6M to Wave Motion for development of Jet Gun technology

Everett, Wash.-based Wave Motion Launch Corp. has won a contract worth nearly $1.6 million from the U.S. Army to continue development of its Jet Gun technology.

Wave Motion’s Jet Gun concept involves firing a jet of supersonic gas to push a projectile to high speeds. Since there’s no physical structure or barrel surrounding the projectile, the system has the potential to be up to 100 times more compact than a rocket or conventional cannon of equivalent power. Also, the barrel-less launcher can handle projectiles in a variety of sizes — which gives the Jet Gun an advantage in logistically challenged environments where ammunition of a particular caliber isn’t available.

In a news release, Wave Motion says it will work with the Army’s DEVCOM Armaments Center to prototype and test a version of the Jet Gun that can be used in tactical indirect fire applications.

The contract, which is structured as a Direct to Phase II grant under the Army’s Small Business Innovative Research program, was awarded after Wave Motion was named a winner in the xTech Pacific competition.

Wave Motion is the brainchild of three University of Washington alumni — Finn van Donkelaar, James Penna and Casey Dunn. The four-year-old venture was one of the award winners in UW CoMotion’s I-Corps program in 2020. Van Donkelaar is the CEO and holds the patent for the Jet Gun system. Penna is the chief operating officer. Dunn served as chief financial officer but is now part of the product management team at Dedrone.

In an email, Penna told GeekWire that the Army funding will be used “to hire on more staff and expand our manufacturing and production capabilities in support of this new contract.”

In 2022, the startup won a $1.3 million award for Jet Gun development from the Office of Naval Research. “We are still finishing the contract we had with the Office of Naval Research and can report that we’ve had successful tests occur under that project,” Penna said.

“Overall, Wave Motion is developing a more advanced version of the Jet Gun that creates longer jets using solid entrained particles to extend the acceleration path for projectiles to potentially hundreds of times the length of the launcher system,” he said. “We plan on prototyping a version of this ‘solid jet gun’ for a proof-of-concept for space launch applications.”

In addition to military and space applications, the technology could be used for industrial applications such as mining and drilling.

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