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Self-Guided Bullet Can Hit Targets a Mile Away
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.'"
Sounds more like a dart than a bullet.
The real trick is training the sharks to fire the rifles.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Personally i don't believe it. A mile away? They probably couldn't hit an elephant at that dist
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If everything went metric we wouldn't have these problems. The bullet is 10cm not 10in.
At last, our technology is starting to catch up to 1940s cartoons! I can't wait for my portable hole...
Demented But Determined.
smooth-bore rifle
"Smooth-bore" and "rifle" are mutually-exclusive terms. Pick one.
Sounds more like it is laser-guided than self-guided too.
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.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Application? How about an overhead drone carrying a payload thats roughly the same weight as now, except instead of blowing things up it just shoots you in the face. You dont have to carry a huge amount of munitions when 95% of the bullets will hit the target.
From now on, whenever you see a new military technology you should think about how it works with drones. For example, it probably isnt a coincidence that our new magnetic launch systems on carriers will allow lighter, more fragile aircraft (read, composite drones) to be launched. The official line is it does less damage to tradition aircraft, which it does. But the guys calling the shots on this stuff make war for a living, and the writing is on the wall as far as the future goes. "Lighter. Cheaper. Disposable"
This is absolutely a sniper weapon. It's just not a sniper weapon to be used against prepared military assets.
It'd do a fine job of assassinating unprepared civilian targets, though.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
No, laser guided implies that there are lasers on the bullet that are helping to measure its location wrt it's surroundings. Instead, the laser just paints a target; it guides itself to the target. Hence, self guided.
Laser Guidance
But it costs money (no idea how much) to train that sniper, and if they are injured you've lost their value. Whereas if the guy using this gun is injured the person next to them can pick it up and use it. Not an expert of course...
In the gaming universe this is known as an "aim bot", and is routinely derided as a hack for no-skill n00bs.
It should be popular.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
World record is a mile and a half. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/sniper_kills_qaeda_from_mi_away_sTm0xFUmJNal3HgWlmEgRL
5 miles? That's pushing the limits of physics just a little too much. It would take a shitload of luck to get a hit from that far away. Farthest I've personally seen done is just over a mile (1800m).
And as others have pointed out, it takes time and money to train a sniper. It also takes a *lot* of luck at the upper ends of distance. You have to account for ballistic trajectory, air resistance (which changes with the temperature), wind (which can change directions remarkably easily), moving targets, etc.. Even at the speeds a bullet travels at, it still takes a discernable amount of time to reach the target at that distance. Having something you can fire and forget, and let your spotter guide it to its target with a laser pointer is a huge improvement, IMO. And besides, it's not going to cost a million bucks a pop once it's in production. Development may have cost that, but nothing in the device is all that expensive to actually make.
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.
Actually, it states 2,475m = 2.475 km = 1.5 miles. I know, we Americans tend to assume everything is measured in miles, but the rest of the world tends to disagree.
If you're covered in flat mirrors, you only get specular reflection, where the light travels in one singular path. If the seeker head is not directly in that path, it will not be able to see you, and will not track. Laser guidance required diffuse reflection, where the laser light is scattered in all directions, and the seeker head can see it from any location.
It requires the high tech 'sniper' skill of "setting up a tripod, pointing the laser at the target, and then taking your hands off". Seriously, a sniper's skill lies not in putting the crosshairs on the target, but in putting the crosshairs off the target... such that wind, bullet drop due to gravity, etc.. etc.. ends up putting the bullet where the amateur would put the crosshairs - and miss. But wind, gravity, etc... don't effect the laser, so an amateur can place the crosshair by eye.
Let me quote from Fowler (1926):
The fact is surely that hardly anyone uses the two words for different occasions; most people prefer one or the other for all purposes, and the preference of the majority is for further.
Of course the laser spot isn't the target for the bullet, who's trying to destroy a laser dot?!
Probably a cat.
No offence, but is there any good reason to use domain name shorteners when posting links in forums / blogs? Surely it's easier and quicker to just copy and paste the original url, which actually has the additional benefit of giving us a clue as to where it leads to? Or maybe you're interested in the click stats Goo.gl provides?
/. comments history that you're not an idiot so I did follow the link, which for anyone else interested, resolves to http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Ball/.
Having said that, I can see from your
Putting the crosshairs off the target is called "kentuckying" or "kentucky windage"; it's for amateur hour. Snipers use scopes that let you dial in the range and windage so that the cross hairs keep the point of aim and point of impact the same. Some scopes for short range sniping use "mil-dots," which is an indexed system of little aimpoints up the vertical axis and along the horizontal axis. Those are typically used in telescopic sights of low magnification. (My hobby used to be long-distance target shooting; now I have a wife and kids; my hobby is dodging responsibility.)
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.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork