Watch: DARPA shows off first successful test of STEERABLE bullet The military boffins at DARPA have just released footage of their first successful shots of a bullet dubbed EXACTO (EXtreme ACcuracy Tasked Ordnance) that can be steered onto a target when fired from a standard rifle. The video, shot at a government firing range in February and April, shows two .50-cal rounds maneuvering in …
Not the steering...the firing of an electronic device from a gun. During WW2, a vacuum tube (valve to our friends east of The Pond) based proximity fuse was fitted to 20mm AA shells.
If you can do that with a tube, doing it with solid state electronics should be a trivial exercise.
Firing a missile out of a gun which after that deploys active guidance systems has been the de-facto standard for tank-on-tank weaponry for 20 years now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M119M_Refleks
The "new" part is making this small enough to be fired out of a .50cal
IIRC most tank guns now are smoothbore since things like finned and sabot rounds don't get much advantage from being spun upon firing, plus it's easier on the barrel. Not only that, tank guns are of a larger bore, making it easier to squeeze electronics into the shells. One of the tricks they designers of the AA proximity fuse had to deal with was making it compact enough to cram into a 20mm AA shell. Cramming course correction into a .50 round, particularly a rifled one that means it has to endure spinning, too, is another matter.
@Voland's right hand
"Firing a missile out of a gun which after that deploys active guidance systems has been the de-facto standard for tank-on-tank weaponry for 20 years now."
As you rightly say, that is a guided missile - i.e. self-propelled. There are, of course, non self-propelled munitions, such as the Copperhead but, again, there is a fundamental difference in that the trajectory is a more pronounced arc than that of a bullet and it's steering is done by affecting the descent portion of the flight - gliding towards the target assisted by gravity.
No such luxury is allowed for a small projectile like this.
There is also a longer range and thus more time for the round to correct its flight. Sure, this bullet may be designed primarily for longer range shots but, as it requires a special, smoothbore barrel, any gun using these projectiles will be unable to fire conventional rounds and thus be limited in utility.
Perhaps that's not really an issue, though, as presumably there would have to be a fairly sophisticated target selection method, which might preclude engagement of targets of opportunity anyway.
And the size difference is a pretty big thing, seeing as a guided projectile launched from a standard tank gun is some 6 times larger than a .50 cal cartridge. That has repercussions not just for how much fanciness you can fit in but the durability of the round as well.
"Firing a missile out of a gun which after that deploys active guidance systems has been the de-facto standard for tank-on-tank weaponry for 20 years now"
A guided missile form a 120mm tank gun is not the same thing as a bullet form a rifle. I'd also contest that such munitions are 'de facto' at all. Tanks use unguided conventional HEAT or sabot ammunition for the vast majority of engagements. It's accurate and better able to resist countermeasures.
"Are you enjoying the DARPA developed internet?"
Ah, the old "if the military didn't take all our money and spend it on toys and prostitutes no one else would ever think of a way to use it well" argument, eh?
I'll take the chance, frankly. The only reason we need a military is to protect us from the sort of person that joins the military; we don't need to be grateful to them as well.
@DerekCurrie
Hmmm, I can see why you think that, but then stop for a moment and think about why things like this do get developed.
If a single round can be used to pick off a strategic target with little chance of missing, then that one round is all that may be needed to bring about a cessation of conflict, rather than just destroying an entire building, block or town to eliminate a potential threat. A round like this actually has more possibility of saving lives from collateral damage than causing mass murder, which is a sobering thought.
And the other thing to consider if that think-tanks like DARPA usually produce many, many failures before they ever come out with something usable. These failures may then go on to become the basis for some rather tasty peacetime technology, with a purpose far removed from conflict or killing. The battlefield is the mother of innovation, and we have so many technologies developed for such a theatre. Superglue comes to mind, developed as a surgical adhesive to be used in an emergency in the field. There's a reason that the best things it sticks together are usually fingers...
So sure, war and conflict are ugly. But never forget that out of the crap, comes the good. Make sure you see both sides before decrying 'pointless' technological developments!
Well we already have precision guided wepons. Funny thing, if a precision guided wepon hits a civilain, you can't say it was a mistake - you deliberetly aimed at an objective and then killed a civilian. That's a war crime. So maybe a sniper is happy to have the excuse of saying "I was aiming at something in fromt of the civilian and the shot veered off...", which is not a war crime...
But the excuse is that precision guidance to this point has generally been with decently big things: things that can easily hit more than one thing at once or cause enough collateral damage that innocents can get caught up in it. They're precision guided but NOT for the most part precision effect. Now, a .50 cal round is tiny enough that you CAN get a precision effect. It's HERE that your trope would apply barring a case of mistaken identity.
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Nitpicking: "civilian" is not always synonymous with something like "innocent untouchable non-combatant." A civilian that, say, wields a weapon by night but attempts to hide behind the classification of a civilian by day may be dealt with harshly under the Geneva Conventions as they're (if I read this correctly) excluded from the protections of the Third and Fourth Conventions. Civilians who join organized resistance movements and carry arms openly are in much better legal shape (gaining protections of the Fourth Convention), but they can still be shot in a warzone without it being a war crime.
>Funny thing, if a precision guided wepon hits a civilain, you can't say it was a mistake
I believe that at that point you simply define the target as an enemy, presumably on the basis that somebody you have just shot is unlikely to still be your friend
"OTOH, remember how the First World War started?"
Not personally.
But wasn't it something to do with Imperialistic nation states unwilling to back down and being stubbornly determined to escalate a fairly unrelated matter into open warfare?
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@Betacam: 'It does seem to be the case that humans will always argue, fight and compete. Given this it makes sense to limit casualties to non-coms. "Steerable weapons do this so lives get saved.'
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Steerable, does a lot of damage,... what more can you ask for? And generals should be in the first line, followed by their officers. No horses - do not drag those poor animals into it.
My guess would be we would see a significant drop in armed conflicts.
Like an old knight once said: A sword... an elegant weapon from more civilized days.
I recall knights in armor sort of fell out of favor when armor-piercing ranged weaponry became all the rage (longbows and crossbows and finally firearms). Forget up close and personal; reach out and touch someone is the preferred doctrine now; the farther out you can hit the enemy, the sooner you can finish the fight (since to get in melee range, you have to MOVE into melee range--by that point you'll have been raked several times over). As for the horses, consider that horses can run faster and provide more force than a man can; if YOU don't bring the horse into play, THEY will to their advantage.
The final rule of war: when things get ugly, the rules go out the window.
Actually no. Kill the healer first. Then you take out the ranged opposition with concentrated firepower, while avoiding the guys with axes and swords. These are usually the last guys to go, and must be turned into charred pincushions before dying, they are really tough.
Leaving the analogy, it applies to every war, which is why Geneva Convention exists to avoid the slaughter of Medics and Red Cross-tagged vehicles. Then you take out their long-range effectiveness, (usually the Air Force and Navy), and end up on infantry and MBTs.
"My guess would be we would see a significant drop in armed conflicts."
Richard Gatling had hopes his invention would lessen the slaught of armed conflicts, too. "It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine – a gun – which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished."
"Like an old knight once said: A sword... an elegant weapon from more civilized days."
That knight probably never saw actual battle, then. Swords leave horrific injuries and are usually wielded with very uncivilized anger.
That knight probably never saw actual battle, then. Swords leave horrific injuries and are usually wielded with very uncivilized anger.
Usually - yes. If you want to be a swordsman and live to a retirement age - no. Sword requires clarity of thinking and control of emotions to be effective. The moment you "use your anger" is the moment you die (assuming you are trying to engage someone who is competent with the blade - they will make a shish-kebap out of you).
Obvious concept is obvious. The first time I encountered the concept was in a Vernor Vinge book; and the protagonist popped up from behind a treestump and whacked a bunch of possible bandits with one burst of a machine gun.
Lovely concept in a book; but it's the sort of thing that absolutely should not be allowed in real life.
"Obvious concept is obvious."
Way to belittle every engineering feat mankind has ever made.
Piling rocks up in a pyramid shape is obvious.
Building bridges to cross massive divides to link communities is obvious.
et al.
"Lovely concept in a book; but it's the sort of thing that absolutely should not be allowed in real life."
Like single missiles which can kill a million people at once? Best we never invent those, then.
Don't forget the ZF-1 by Zorg industries from "The fith Element".
One shot and 'Replay' sends every following shot to the same location...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7wOX2WqbXE
Small caliber steerable ammunition also gets a brief mention in the novel "Across Realtime" by Vernor Vinge circa 1984 but the daddy of them all has to be Judge Dredd who's been loosing off heat-seeker rounds since 1977.
Re: "return to sender" bullet.
The US deployed these in vietnam. Basically, take one cartridge, remove the propellent which is a low explosive designed to propel the bullet and replace it with the highest grade explosive possible. The resulting round weighs the same, and looks the same.
When fired however, it explodes with such force that the weapon is destroyed along with the person using it.
Now we can win back Iraq, stabilize Syria, control Pakistan, pacify Afghanistan, blow up Yemen cowherdes, defeat Putin, crack down on Coloradan dope dealers, neuter China, squash Yemen, secure the border with Mexico, put down Venezuela, keep the Pacific the Matre Nostrum and be forever friends with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and other nasty shitholes. Did I mention that we can bring justice to whistleblowers?
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"I wonder what it feels like to work on this stuff?"
Probably not what you meant but.......
People actually spend their working lives devising new and improved ways to kill, maim, etc.
Hiram Maxim (of machine gun fame) was born in America but became Naturalized British and died in 1916. He must have been aware in the last two years of his life of the vast scale of human destruction caused by HIS invention. Wonder how he coped with it? He was an atheist of course, but still....
How do you justify it to yourself? How do you live with it? Does money or nationalism really still your conscience? Do you HAVE a conscience?
What IS conscience actually?
Could YOU do it?
I'm also a non-believer, but if perchance there really IS any truth in it - there presumably must be an especially hot place in hell.....
"Maxim may have been disappointed had he lived to find that artillery and disease were the greatest takers of life between 1914-1919."
Mostly because his gun made it impossible to infantry to be mobile in the way it had been, so they ended up in unsanitary trenches that they had to be blown out of.
Anyway, Maxim didn't care one way or the other as long as the royalties rolled in.
"How do you justify it to yourself? How do you live with it? Does money or nationalism really still your conscience? Do you HAVE a conscience?"
Taking a step back, if you analyse your own job, it's not likely to be much morally better. Maybe you help create or sell a must-have gadget that increases avarice and dissatisfaction on a global scale and uses rare elements for trivial reasons. Perhaps you make choices about healthcare that are more about costs than saving lives, or prioritise people's needs based upon their wealth rather than actual need. Maybe you work for a bank whose entire existence is based around getting people into debt.
when you think about it a lot of the jobs we do are massively immoral. Making a bullet that might kill fifty people a year is chicken-feed in the world of job morality.
"I wonder what it feels like to work on this stuff?"
You tell yourself that snipers are the most efficient and humane operators on the battlefield. You tell yourself that this will help our side win against their side. You tell yourself that the basic tech will be developed anyway and in twenty years it will be trivial to buy the necessary parts off the shelf, so you are simply making sure that our lot get it first.
You tell yourself that our arms dealers won't be given special credit facilities by our government to enable them to sell this to the other side, who can't otherwise afford it because they've hammered their own people (and economy) into the ground. Then you shoot yourself.
I wonder what it feels like to work in the foreign office.
Mostly they are 'my country right or wrong' types. I'm a biologist and I have perused job ads at Porton Down and the like and wondered. I have also worked with people who are ex that world and they my country etc patriots.
I'm a pacifist and anyway my skill set is not really a good fit for that stuff anyway.
I know a few chaps that work at LockMart etc in various divisions. Most of them work on tiny component bits (leading edge design on a missile fin for example).rather than the whole thing.
I've asked them about it, and the general response is, "If I wasn't doing it someone else would be, so the stuff would all still be designed and exist anyway. The money is alright, and the engineering challenges we have to solve are awesome."
A lot of them are fairly hippy lefty types as well, which always makes me chuckle.None of them have killed themselves yet...
So, when Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch was sniping in 2008's Shooter, as far as I can tell from Google (am working this Saturday, so can't take the time to re-watch the movie to double check before i post), they were only talking about distances around 1800m.
So was the movie that being uncharacteristically modest (for Hollywood) in it's claims? Or was 1800 at the higher end of the records back then, but in the last 6 years the distances have increased?
Unless they have lengthened the round it would weigh less and not have the same cross sectional density and thus would not penetrate as much on a hard target. Making the rounds lighter would also affect ballistic efficiency, shortening the range.
The course corrections looked rather abrupt on the video and not quite feasible for a ballistic object but hard to judge given no range or view point parallax info.
.50 cal sniper rounds aren't for shooting hard targets, unless used in an anti-materiel role, in which case you're generally shooting at a large, static target and don't need much in the way of help.
Lighter-weight explosive 50 cal rounds have been used since WW2 and work just fine. If the mass reduction is an issue, it can be rectified by adding a tungsten pointy-bit, which weighs hell of a lot more than lead and cruises through armour quite nicey. Not that military ammunition is a lump of lead anyway.
"The course corrections looked rather abrupt on the video and not quite feasible for a ballistic object but hard to judge given no range or view point parallax info."
I'm going to bet that it was a ballistic object and that they're not lying, rather than your armchair assessment being correct.
" it makes sense to limit casualties to non-coms"
I find this remark by Betacom (9 hours ago) difficult to understand. I thought the object of this design project was to limit casualties to justifiable military targets. Or does he really have something against NCOs ?
Chris Cosgrove
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