The Navy has a need to measure temperatures at critical areas on the inner bore surfaces of large guns in order to insure appropriate action is taken in case of a misfire. Inappropriate actions could result in the lost of life and the disabling of a naval warship.

The NETS system, developed under Navy sponsorship, uses ultrasonic waves to non-intrusively measure the temperature at the inner bore surface of a gun. The system has successfully completed field trials on the MK45 MOD 4 gun. This system provides realtime temperature data. In addition to surface temperature, the system also shows promise as a realtime barrel erosion monitor and has the
potential to measure transient temperature variations on the inner bore surface every millisecond