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Robo-Gunsight System Makes Sniper's Life Easier
An anonymous reader writes "Military and police marksmen could see their rifle sights catch up with the 21st century with a fiber-optic laser-based sensor system that automatically corrects for even tiny barrel disruptions. Factors such as heat generated by previously fired shots, to a simple bump against the ground can affect the trueness a rifle barrel. The new system precisely measures the deflection of the barrel relative to the sight and then electronically makes the necessary corrections. With modern high-caliber rifles boasting ranges of up to two miles, even very small barrel disruptions can cause a shooter to miss by a wide margin."
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What's next, wallhack?
You're not alone: I understand and share your feelings, and I'm sure many other people feel much the same.
But let me put a twist on this. The military also knows it's a problem.
For most of the history of warfare (I'm riffing here on War by Gwynne Dyer), soldiers were usually in close company with their fellow soldiers -- a line of a dozen (or a hundred, or a thousand) men, carrying spears or muskets, facing a line of men similarly armed. This was true right up through the First World War: men packed into trenches.
The Second World War changed the pattern: increasing lethality of weapons, combined with motorized troop mobility, dictated dispersion of soldiers -- large numbers of them -- into individual, isolated foxholes.
After the war, the US Army did a study: how effective were the foxhole-isolated soldiers? How did those men actually behave? What percentage fired their rifles?
It turned out that a large number of soldiers never fired their weapons. They stayed down in their holes, stricken by fear. And ashamed: each soldier thought that he was the only one, that his buddies from Boot Camp must be doing their duty, but me, I'm cowering in my own shit in a hole because I'm so fucking scared of death.
Courage in the face of death. Not an easy thing to muster. But most men can do it, if they're in the company of their fellow soldiers.
So, naturally, the Army -- the most pragmatic institution Humankind has ever devised -- asked: what do we do about courage in this new age of dispersed warfare?
And the answer was: train men to greater levels of violence. So that, even when isolated from his fellows, the individual soldier will still be capable of killing and dying as ordered.
-kgj
You're mishearing. It's actually the war on tourism. They're trying to make airports so unpleasant that no-one uses them.