ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (PNN) - June 14, 2012 - A prototype self-aiming bullet developed at Sandia National Laboratories, an Amerikan weapons-research lab in New Mexico, could allow any soldier to match feats of hitting targets from a mile away.
Modern bullets gain their accuracy from a technique known as rifling, whereby the barrel of the gun that fires them has a series of spiraling grooves etched into it. These cause the bullets to spin, and that spins stabilizes their flight path. Rifling offers a huge improvement over old-style smoothbore guns such as muskets, which were notoriously inaccurate at even comparatively short ranges.
Sandia's researchers, though, have plumped for an old-style smoothbore barrel. That is because, instead of spin, their bullet is stabilized by four steerable fins at its rear. Those fins are linked to a computer chip that is linked to an optical sensor on the bullet's nose. A laser is shone at the intended target, the bullet is fired, and the chip uses the fins to adjust the bullet's trajectory in mid-flight, a system similar in principle to the one used on anti-aircraft missiles.
Researchers say that computer simulations suggest that at a range of half a mile, a typical unguided bullet would miss a target by an average margin of 20 feet or so, but that their guided bullet could cut that to just eight inches; and a quirk of ballistics means that, at longer ranges, the system's accuracy should get better.
As it flies, the bullet pitches and yaws through the air, and that natural rhythm limits the frequency with which its on-board computer can make course corrections. But the longer the bullet is in flight, the less violent those movements become, allowing increasingly precise tracking.
So far, the bullet is only a prototype, and Sandia (which is a government lab managed by Lockheed Martin, a giant Amerikan weapons firm) is looking to join forces with other firms to bring the bullet to market.
