Self-Guided Bullet Can Hit Targets a Mile Away 421
New submitter jpwilliams writes "Gizmag reports that researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have tested a 10-centimeter bullet that can be fired from a smooth-bore rifle to hit a laser-marked target one mile away. The bullet 'includes an optical sensor in the nose to detect a laser beam on a target. The sensor sends information to guidance and control electronics that use an algorithm in an eight-bit central processing unit to command electromagnetic actuators. These actuators steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.' Interestingly, accuracy improves with targets that are further away, because 'the bullet's motions settle the longer it is in flight.'"
Sweet! (Score:4, Interesting)
Since soldiers will be using this, I can enable auto-aim without being called a noob.
Re:Lasers? Fired from a shark? (Score:5, Interesting)
So don't be all day about it - aim and fire and let the bullet do the rest of the work, that's what it's for.
The 'other side' already has someone with night-vision goggles scanning for muzzle flashes of sniper weapons. He will easily see the IR laser too. In fact, that laser will give him a short warning that a sniper is about to fire. At 1.5 kilometers range, a second's warning is enough to yell "down" so nobody's torso is in the same place that it was when the trigger was pulled.
Smooth bore rifle? (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't that an oxymoron?
Re:Dart Maybe? (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Here's my deleted (censored?) submission (Score:5, Interesting)
The perfect way to do war, would be to just assassinate each others leaders over and over again until at some point one side get's one, that thinks getting assassinated is not really worth whatever they started that war over. Then that side loses and the war is done.
Casualties should be about 5-10 politicians.
Re:Dart Maybe? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Hey, it's Slashdot. We can still find ways to break it.
I was thinking, this: http://goo.gl/d52rX [goo.gl]
It's not 10cm caliber. It's 10cm long. (Score:4, Interesting)
Many people have commented that 10cm is up there in artillery-shell caliber. This new bullet is 10cm long. The pictures show something that's in a typical small-arms caliber, probably 9mm or smaller. It will require a special gun that can chamber an unusually long cartridge, but not an artillery piece.
The real win with this thing will be hitting moving targets. No more estimating range and leading the target. Just keep pointed at it. Sighting and designator system that can lock onto a target already exist, and shrinking them down to rifle-scope size isn't all that hard. There's more video processing going on in any modern video camera or phone.
Re:And who is holding the laser pointer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sniping is mostly about knowing the relationships between a complex set of circumstances. You could train a monkey to use a scope to paint a target with a laser. You know you're on target because you can see the laser on the target.
Knowing you're on target to sent a dumb bullet into a target a mile away is many orders of magnitude more difficult.
Re:Dart Maybe? (Score:5, Interesting)
The training of a sniper is not just in shooting. The USMC Scout Sniper school has three areas of training. Marksmanship is the one that people most immediately associate with a sniper. Observation is the second area of training. Stalking is the third area. This laser guided bullet won't replace a sniper since all it does is replace the marksmanship factor of a sniper. That of course assumes that the system is no heavier than the equipment a scout-sniper team would already take with them and doesn't significantly increase their profile. Scout-snipers will still operate in 2 man teams behind enemy lines and such operatives are still going to have to be highly trained to accomplish the task and if anything, such a system would not want to be used by scout-snipers precisely because we wouldn't want that system to fall into enemy hands.
I don't believe this system is useful from a battlefield perspective. This seems more like a system the CIA would be interested in for usage in an urban environment.