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Army Eyes Anti-Sniper Robot
Hiawatha writes "iRobot has teamed up with Boston University to create a robot that can spot enemy snipers on a battlefield. Before the smoke of the shot clears away, the REDOWL robot should have the shooter in its sights." iRobot is the same company that brought you the popular Roomba robotic vacuum.
I work for a company called Trex Enterprises, and we built one of these a long time ago. Go check it out on our website... http://www.trexenterprises.com/laserrad.html
I read that too and thought it was odd that none of the weapons mentioned, ak-47, m-16, pistols, are weapons that snipers use. An M-16 has an effective range of 300-400 meters or so. Snipers are capable of sitting 1000 meters out and hitting their target. The sound of a weapon discharge at that distance is very faint. Also, this is picking nits... but... Snipers use smokeless powder. They work very hard at not being seen.
Your post has some incorrect facts
1) An M-16 has an effective range of 550 meters, and its not hard, every year I have to qualify with my rifle and we fire at the 500 yard range in the prone, at a normal human target I hit 7 out of 10 shots with ease, and I'm far from being a skilled shooter.
2) Most snipers in the Middle East use an ak-47s with a scope
3) Snipers are capable of shooting up to 1500 meters away; the record for the longest kill is held by Carlos Hathcock from 2250 meters away (granted he was one of the best snipers around)
About two years ago I saw a show that was showing off a new anti sniper tech. It was a very high speed digital camera attached to a computer. It actually looked for bullets, flying through the air. When it found one, it would trace the trajectory, usually seeing the bullet 3-6 times in all, and plot a reverse course which in theory should cross through the point of origin. (the gun)
There was no weaponry attached, it was merely a computer screen to show the bullets as captured, overlaid on the live view, along with drawing a line showing reverse trajectory. The men in the field still had to interperet it and spot the sniper and deal with him.
I assume this is the next step of evolution of the system I saw back then. Should have been sufficiently technologically challenging, though I suppose if you could get a more 3-d idea of where the bulllets were, (which would be possible with two cameras I suppose) then use laser rangefinding to calculate distance as you sweep across the reverse trajectory, you should be able to calculate how far away the bullet is from you at any given point in the sweep, and when that number intersects with the laser range finder's distance reading, unless you have crossed an obstacle, there's your target. Actually I suppose it would need an exact match, because if the LRF was showing several feet shorter distance, then you're probably passing an obstacle that's between you and the course of the bullet. It's probably using some variation on that simple idea.
So we don't quite have a defense drone a la Aliens, but it's not a bad idea for somewhere that you are expecting trouble.
Problem with snipers is, if they are halfway decent, after the first shot they've already won and it's not going to help much to shoot back.
REALLY cool would be a gun that shoots lead slugs (like safety slugs, lightly jacketed powered lead) and could take bullets out of the air, Patriot Missile style. That's probably more than a few years out though.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Negative. Snipers do NOT fire from the same location. Now, a sharpshooter might if they're in a fortified location (like in an urban setting) but a sniper out in the wild gets their behind out of the area once they've taken their shot.
Take a gander at the book 'Marine Sniper' some time. It's the story of Carlos Hathcock in Vietnam. There's some pretty amazing tales in there. I'll give one great example.
He was dropped off to take care of a Vietnamese offical in one of his toughest jobs. He knew it was nuts, but took it because if he didn't he knew they'd get some other guy to do it that wasn't as good as him, and the guy would probably die.
The building where the official would be dropped off was about, IIRC, 2800 meters away from the tree line. It was just a big field after that with tall grass. Hathcock knew he'd only have one shot at this, so he had to get in close -- which for him was 800 meters. He spent about 2 days straight crawling through the weeds out there between the tree line to a depression in the field where he could take his shot and then get out parallel to the way he came in and then await extraction.
He took his shot, saw it was a definate hit and then "booked" outta there.. it took him hours and hours to crawl out of there on his belly. You don't just get up and start running, you still have to maintain stealth.
I used to be in the US Marines and was trained as a Designated Marksman, which is an urban sniper, and worked with many of the Scout-Snipers which are the "classic" snipers.
.50 caliber rifle (A.K.A. Special Application Sniper Rifle (SASR)). This means 5 seconds until the sound is heard and means the sniper can get a decent head start running away, if they want, which they probably don't or they can just stand up, wave, and be happy they are outside the range of any weapon their target is carrying. This is assuming they don't fire from the crest of a hill and slowly back down off of it removing themselves from any danger of direct-fired weapons. Yes, indirect fire is still a problem, but it has always been a problem. If you know where the sniper is, you can always call for mortar or artillery fire. However, this is hardly cost effective, and even calling in a strike on their position does not guarantee a kill - especially if they choose their location wisely.
My first comment is that a good sniper can hit someone at ~1500 meters with a
Second, snipers are some of the sneakiest people I have ever met. If you tell them there is a robot that will respond to the noise they make, they will just set up a booby trap a hundred meters away and have their spotter trigger it at the same time they shoot. (Snipers always work in teams.) There is no way the robot is going to hear a bullet fired when it is being over-loaded by the sound of 2 pounds of C4 being detonated. If the snipers find out that it can still hear them, they will daisy chain a couple of claymore mines together with some det cord just to make things more confusing.
Finally, on a sort-of-related-but-side note, I have seen bullets fly through the air and it is pretty cool. When standing behind a shooter, just focus on the air about half-way to their target. After a few shots, your eye will start focusing on the bullet.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Not only that, but after the first shot, someone walks out to within 20 or so feet of the sniper's position (to give the observers a rough idea of where the sniper is) and the sniper must fire the second shot without being detected.
They actually just fire blanks now and read numbers off cards that the graders are holding. I suppose the "metal plate" method had some drawbacks.
That said, I read a story on the net once where Charles Hathcock was at a test of a brand spanking new multi million dollar infra-red based sniper detection system. Some time during the demonstration, he snuck away and stalked toward the observers until he was 20 or so feet from them. He stood up and showed them what defeated their system - a $10 plastic umbrella.
Snipercountry has some excellent articles and some touch on Infra-Red detection.
http://snipercountry.com/Articles/IRDetection.asp
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