Self-guided bullet can shoot target a mile away http://www.kfoxtv.com/ap/ap/new-mexico/sandia-labs-engineers-create-self-guided-bullet/nHQ75/
[TROLL]I seen this somewhere before.. oh yah, just the other evening playing BF3!! dude was sitting in his own spawn sniping fools across the map... think DICE was the original developer of this [/TROLL]
hm. thats interesting. Not really that useful, at this point.. but very interesting as a new class of weapon. They way I see the article as portraying this munition, this is technically a miniaturized squad support weapon in a similar class to a mortar. You'd have a gunner aiming and firing what has to be a very expensive bullet. There's no way they would be able to handle this and actively lase a target over a mile a way. Also, a mile is a pretty distant target for a handheld laser, the beam spreads pretty quickly in most hand held configurations. So, it'd definitely be one of the bigger and more fancy optics sets on a very powerful laser handled by a support guy. Sound kind of stupid to spend that kind of money on a a single target when our Army is the best artillerymen in the world at long range heavy round mortar fire with howitzers and the like. Probably not going to see this tech in the hands of infantry, then. Another way to look at this is simply the next best thing in sniping- a guaranteed effective hit every time. Now, sniper has a support with him in the team that could lase, but its going to give their position away if you are lasing the forehead of a target with an effective and visible laser. Laser detectors are just too effective. Also, Why would the military spend thousands on a round that wont put a target out of line of site? (remember, you still have to have direct line of sight for targeting and for getting the round out of the barrel so the optics will lock on to target.) I see a standard sniper team with CAS and modern ammunition in the rifles a much scarier and faster acting system while maintaining force supremecy with their training and superior available air support- for less money per round. A CheyTac .408 is 7 bucks per round. A Lapua .338 is even cheaper. A standard Barret .50BMG is even cheaper still. These will be thousands per round. This made my mind drift to what could be the best, and scariest use. Some of the drones we have are pretty incredible. Much more adaptable than you think. But they use high explosives on mini bombs. This munition would be an extremely interesting and particularly devastating tool if ramped up to a slightly higher caliber and used on aerial platforms like drones. They already house spectacularly accurate fast acquisition optics and have been known to be able to actively track surface and air targets with ease. How scary would it be for these drones to have single high value target takedown abilities? The full potential of this scenario would be to have a drone with the ability to literally take a target out of a crowd. Or, shoot someone out of a window rather than blow up the house. Now, of course we wouldn't bullets into a crowd due to collateral damage concerns, but the ability would be massively demoralizing to enemy forces knowing we could.
Imagine... The drones in the air doing the laser targeting (multiple lasers, thermal, etc,) while drones on the ground do the firing.
understood. In fact, its going to be the next generation of this tech that will truly be interesting.