41–50 of 158 posts
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I believe that targets are marked using a laser.
If you can aim the laser, you can aim the weapon. This would certainly involve computer vision, makes it even more scary.
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It says "optical guidance system" in the article. I suspect that the sniper needs to light up the target with a laser sight, and there's a small computer and microchip that adjusts the form of the bullet (per other commenter's description here) so that the laser dot is always directly ahead. The article also says it's designed to compensate for "weather, wind, or target movement", so my assumption is that the sniper…
"It says "optical guidance system" in the article." It doesn't make much sense that if you were developing an advanced weapons system that, other than to get out disinformation, it would be a good thing to tell exactly what you are doing in any detail at all. What is the advantage of releasing any information at all other than: 1) To insure support and funding for projects 2) To scare the enemy. 3) To get the enemy t…
Just a hunch, having worked with some PR people before.
I wonder what each bullet will cost once production starts? I sometimes think about the origins of the second amendment and if it's intent was to empower citizens against a potentially oppressive government then it has failed. US military technology might as well be black magic. What can a "well regulated militia" do against smart bullets, M1 Abrams, Apache helicopters, etc? Thank goodness we are kept fat and happy.
This concept is actually called "bread and circus", and was originally applied by mid-roman emperors to better control the populace and keep political satisfaction up. I'm kinda disappointed that the wikipedia article doesn't go into detail about this because it played a huge part in maintaining control of the empire.
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That may explain how the target corrects its trajectory towards the actual target, but how does the bullet determine what the "actual target" is in the first place? I would imagine this would be simple in test cases, but in the real world, what about a hostile target may differentiate it from a friendly ally that is nearby?
I commented below that it's marked by laser, but the counterargument was that if you can aim a laser you can aim a rifle. Let me rephrase: the goal of this system is to correct for deviations from the actual target which occur in the air. Because of wind, temperature, rotation of the earth (when taking really long shots) and other factors a marksman might have to adjust his or her aim and actually aim off-target to g…
I could imagine some scenarios where indirect fire, perhaps coordinated with a drone that can light up the target with the laser, could be useful.
I wonder what each bullet will cost once production starts? I sometimes think about the origins of the second amendment and if it's intent was to empower citizens against a potentially oppressive government then it has failed. US military technology might as well be black magic. What can a "well regulated militia" do against smart bullets, M1 Abrams, Apache helicopters, etc? Thank goodness we are kept fat and happy.
If by "we" you mean you and me, and people like us. Plenty of people are skipping meals to save money.
I wonder what each bullet will cost once production starts? I sometimes think about the origins of the second amendment and if it's intent was to empower citizens against a potentially oppressive government then it has failed. US military technology might as well be black magic. What can a "well regulated militia" do against smart bullets, M1 Abrams, Apache helicopters, etc? Thank goodness we are kept fat and happy.
You can't maintain a police state by blowing up houses. If you do that, you end up cutting off your only revenue source (taxing employed people), because your tax base either can't or won't work (because they're dead, the roads are impassable, etc.). In fact, this situation would actually be quite beneficial to an insurgency, because if an attacker can't pay or feed their foot soldiers, they will lose their army.
In the end, you need foot soldiers to maintain a police state. It's not economically feasible to give everyone state of the art sniper rifles like this, and spending 10x more money on soldiers doesn't make them 10x more effective.
It is exponentially harder to maintain a police state than to destroy one, which is why even poorly trained, poorly equipped insurgencies can effectively fight against well trained, well equipped governments. If the US government has problems with this in Vietnam and Iraq, imagine how much worse it would be if they tried the same thing on their own well-armed revenue source.
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I have absolutely no idea. But it seems like these would be moving far too fast, and the maneuvering far too precise, for GPS tracking to be used.
Between 880-930meters/sec. I would think that a gps would have a hard time fitting inside a typical 50bmg bullet anyway. They only weigh about 45grams.
Why is there wasted space? As powders become more efficient, you need less powder to get the same result. Consider the age of the round - there's been a lot of development in powders in the interim.
Now get your targets and guidance from an overhead drone and shoot at people you can't even see!
How did Tom Selleck defeat these things?
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I commented below that it's marked by laser, but the counterargument was that if you can aim a laser you can aim a rifle. Let me rephrase: the goal of this system is to correct for deviations from the actual target which occur in the air. Because of wind, temperature, rotation of the earth (when taking really long shots) and other factors a marksman might have to adjust his or her aim and actually aim off-target to g…
One of the aims of this program was to essentially give any 18 year old kid the tool set to perform like a highly trained sniper. There will still be a need for marksmanship training but this enables the minimum standard of marksmanship for its user to be akin to an expert. Ballistics computation is complicated but this simplifies it to a more straight-forward "point and shoot" approach that almost anyone can underst…