A Look at Suppressor Innovator Phil “DOC” Dater, 1937–2025

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There was a time when you could ask any question about suppressors, well almost any, and the answer would be “Doc Dater.” Or “Ask Doc Dater.” Well, the chance to ask has passed, as Philip Dater passed away while we were all hiking the aisles of the SHOT show.

He studied engineering, but that apparently wasn’t difficult enough, so he switched to medicine and became an M.D. He then enlisted in the Air Force as a pre-emptive step against his impending draft notice. This led to a two-decade career as a radiologist. So, he was already high-tech before he started working on silencers. Like so many of the early firearms inventors, he started making silencers because he wasn’t happy with what he could get. He used the machine shop in the hospital he worked at (imagine that happening these days—even a machine shop in a hospital is alien to today’s environment) to make the silencers he thought were better.

Well, this kind of experimenting required paperwork, so he formed Automatic Weapons Company while in Arizona. Yes, AWC, the company you know of today. This was in the late 1960s, when pretty much what there was were Maxim suppressors left over from well before WWII, or the then-current, but not satisfactory designs that were crude even by the standards of the 1960s.

One of the problems in the early years was a simple one: how to measure the effectiveness of silencers. “Doc” Dater, or “Phil” worked to hammer out the details of just how one goes about measuring the effectiveness of a suppressor. He even had a second start in life as an independent sound tester for those wishing to find out how well their suppressor designs worked. The measuring tools are now much, much better, but the methodology that got worked out is still what we use today.

The company grew to AWC Systems Technologies, and in the early 1990s Phil left Arizona and AWC and moved to Idaho. However, he was not done collaborating and inventing, he then formed Gemini Technologies, which was soon changed to Gemtech. More of a thinker, designer and inventor, (this despite being a serious Ham radio operator when he was in the southwest), Doc Dater collaborated with agencies, companies, and think tanks on design and use. He also held seminars, two day’s worth of fire-hose-level information dispensation and testing demonstration to those who qualified.

I was lucky enough to have made the cut to attend one of those seminars. You can imagine the reaction of a room full of law enforcement investigators, various special-operations-level personnel, and even some arson investigators (no idea on that crew) to the entry of a gun writer and his photographer, to the classroom. It didn’t take long before we could almost hear the mutterings: “Equations? No-one said there would be equations.” Even steeped in suppressors as I had been by then, I learned a lot, and later learned even more in correspondence with “Doc” Dater. (I just couldn’t bring myself to call him “Phil”.)

One of the big things about testing is the process. Not just the book (“Do this, then that, then this then that”), but the first watching it being done, then the hand’s-on process. If you ever get a chance to do any kind of hand’s-on lab work, suppressor testing or any other kind, you’ll know it exactly. There’s the book, then there’s the video, then there’s actually doing it. You learn extra details from doing that you just can’t pick up in a book, or from a video. We got that, plus the chance to pummel “Doc Dater” in the seminar portion with questions of all kinds.

And again, you learned things from a talk with the guy who started things, details that you just can’t learn otherwise. Knowledge he picked up from decades of testing and being asked questions; “Oh yes, we tried that. It didn’t work. Everyone tries it, and then finds out it doesn’t work.” Despite probably having been asked the same questions thousands of times, Doc was patient and polite. And, since we were going to be on the range testing, he arranged to have some real exotics (even for those of us in the suppressor biz) for testing. All of this learning and knowledge on suppressors, comprising a strange journey for someone born in Manhattan in 1937.

Once I had a chance to look inside some of the early designs that had come from AWC, and later Gemtech, I realized that a lot of what I had been seeing in other companies’ offerings were the same as his. Not to throw shade on those early competitors, but suppressor design, once you were past the basics, was hard. R&D might well consist of buying a popular one, tearing it apart, and making your own. Now, that’s not the case, because you can make a design, decibel-test it, adjust, refine, and make it better. Also, with modern computer modeling, refinement is even more advanced.

Other things we now take for granted, like how to mount a suppressor on a firearm. Yes, Hiram Percy Maxim had mounting silencers figured out back before the Wright Brothers first proved heavier-than-air flight could be done. However, direct-thread is not the be-all and end-all, and some sort of QD mount system had to be worked out. That happened during the time Phillip Dater was driving the industry forward. Not that he did it all, but if you look back, it seemed like he was everywhere, and had a hand in everything.

As time went by, the work of keeping a company and a consulting business up and running became a lot like real work, so Phillip Dater sold off his stake in Gemtech, and now we know it as one of the top-end suppressor makers with product of excellence to be had. (I know, I have a shelf full of nothing but Gemtech suppressors in the safe.) Doc Dater is now gone, not quite having made it to his 88th birthday, but he leaves behind more than what a lot of people might realize. Unless you are in the industry, or deep in the history, you hadn’t a clue about his starting two companies (both still major forces in silencers) and having had a big hand in developing the very system we use to measure and test suppressor performance.

Thanks, Doc.

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: I had the 
pleasure of meeting “Doc Dater” back in 2000 when we were both on the National Defense Industrial Association Small Arms Committee. I always enjoyed his live-fire demos and speaking to him as he was always very generous with his knowledge. He is really one of the greats in small arms history. – Vincent L. DeNiro] 

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