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This is the most information I could find. Maybe someone else can do better:

Design and Demonstration of a Guided Bullet for Extreme Precision Engagement of Targets at Long Range Performing for the DARPA Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program, the team developed a revolutionary .50 caliber bullet guidance system that will be used to produce the smallest, fastest, highest g projectile to date that is fully guided. To perform across a 70,000-g launch acceleration, they designed a first-of-a-kind, two-body bullet with a decoupled aft section that despins from 120,000 to 0 rpm in under 300 ms. This required the implementation of an innovative, alternator controlled, despun aft section that provides sufficient maneuverability but low drag for the bullet to remain supersonic out to maximum range.
The team worked within an 11-month time frame to deliver a system that exceeded all of the accuracy requirements across a variety of night- and daytime ranges, moving targets, wind speeds and directions, and other environmental conditions. The effort culminated in May with a physics and experimentally-based, fully integrated hardware- and software-in-the-loop demonstration that not only validated superior system performance, but also exceeded designated product requirements over all ranges and all target motion challenges. For this accomplishment, the program was recently awarded Phase II to continue the design and development of the guidance mechanics and electronics in collaboration with a commercial sponsor. The outstanding technical achievements demonstrated in the design, fabrication, simulation, and testing of this miniaturized guidance system are well-deserving of this award.

http://www.draper.com/Document... (page 109)

There's also a picture of a model that differs from those that appear in most other press releases.

From what I could find out, it looks like Draper Laboratories does the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (the interesting part), Teledyne does the optical target acquisition/locking (semi interesting), and Orbital ATK makes the ammunition part -- probably primer, charge, casing, and shell.

Speaking of technology and schools, you can't forget Draper in a list like that. They're right across the street from the MIT campus, and if memory serves me right, they were originally part of MIT a few decades ago, before splitting off and becoming a separate entity. A ridiculous number of people working there come straight from MIT, too, and they do a lot of government and military funded projects, too.

As an example, when I had a summer job there (working on a DARPA-funded project for the military, naturally), I was one of only two people on my project who didn't have a degree from MIT.

The sheer number of opportunities at places like Draper and the others mentioned by this comment's parent, along with all the biotech stuff going on here, are a good incentive to keep a lot of the techies from the area's schools around after they graduate.

Now, SUNW is conceding the market for high-end servers.

SUNW recently purchased Afara. It supplies processors for low-end servers. SUNW will still try to maintain a presence there. Unfortunately, with the SPARC64 going to 4 cores per die and 2 threads per core, the processor from Afara is starting to look less and less competitive. SUNW will exit the market for even low-end servers by 2007.

The announcement of Power5, with its SMT capabilities, is tantamount to announcing a starship for intergalatic space travel when all the spacecraft in the Federation can only travel within the solar system. Power5 and, to a lesser extent, SPARC64 basically killed the UltraSPARC line and the entire hardware business of the Sun Microsystems.

By the way, Professor Susan Eggers of the University of Washington must be tickled pink because she development most of the technology for simultaneous multithreading. IBM, with its Power5, proved that her ideas were all right. The Draper prize in engineering should be going her way.

... from the desk of the reporter

www.draper.com Back when I installed Air Traffic Control simulators we used Draper screens. I was looking at the Draper site and they said they had seemless displays and this was about a year ago. We could get pretty seemless with the large screens that we had.

Fully autonomous models have flown, these things could be safer than cars but you would have to give up control to the computer. A fully self flying/onboard controlled with video. It's expensive and a ways out, but we will probably fly in one. Well, not the model. Does leave the hands free to drop things, un-tethered cell phones would be very illegal.

> I'll bet it's possible to create a
> cybernetic "animal" that functions on 95%
> instinct and 5% learning.

It could even be a tuna:

Draper VCUUV Project

For anyone who wants to know MIT Intrumentation Laboratory changed the name of the company to The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Incorporated. We still do GN&C work for NASA and still do other projects for the goverment as a not for profit organization. To find out more about us try our web site at http://www.draper.com .

While you will find some of the bureucratization in these organizations that you find in government, you will also find people who would be sympathetic to open source. Being as these are well-establined outfits that regularly win contracts, these are good allies for the open source movement.