Posted on 10/10/2010 9:34:05 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
A sniper crouches near an open window and zooms in on his target, who sits a half-mile away. He peers through a scope and holds his breath, preparing to squeeze the trigger. But it’s windy outside, and he can't afford a miss. What to do?
A new DARPA-funded electro-optical system will calculate the ballistics for him, telling him where to aim and ensuring a perfect shot, no matter the weather conditions.
Lockheed Martin won a $6.9 million contract this week for the second phase of DARPA’s One-Shot system, which will provide direct observations of a target, measure every variable that influences a bullet’s flight, and calculate the aim offset in a sniper’s rifle scope.
During the project’s first phase, which started in 2007, Lockheed developed a down-range system that measured average crosswind; range to target; spotter scope position; air temperature, pressure, and humidity; and more, according to Military Aerospace. Using all those variables, it calculated the ballistics for a .308 bullet at ranges as far as 3,600 feet.
While that’s impressive, the system was too heavy and unwieldy, and it couldn’t be used with standard rifle scopes. The phase two design will be more compact and able to operate in real time and over longer distances.
Very sensible - saves bullets.
The final production design will only be available to the military and law enforcement because the flunkies in the American bureaucratic government are "afraid" and "concerned" about its Citizens having access to such a "terrible instrument of the soldier". /sarcasm
I may have to save my pennies for the rest of my life but it would be worth it!
Or they could just call me and save a lot of money.
I wonder if it will be available in 6.5 Carcano./sarc
Very funny.
“Sits a half a mile away”? Snipers (I was not one) regularly operate at a mile to a mile and a half. I could take someone out at a half a mile - I am 60+ and my eyes are getting worse w/ age. Semper Fi.
It sounds a bit too much like the system used by the M109 155mm howitzer, with weather balloons and radiosondes.
By the time you’ve launched the weather balloons to get real-time information about upper and lower atmospheric winds, the bad guy has killed the hostage and gotten in a car across the border in Pakistan.
Yeah, until you pull the trigger & get a “File 404” error message.
Fantastic , now onto next phase, removing the one operating the trigger.
How soon will obama authorize selling these to Hamas, Pakistan, and China?
By Rebecca Boyle
“Snipers An Army sniper team in Afghanistan. Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Army
A sniper crouches near an open window and zooms in on his target, who sits a half-mile away. He peers through a scope and holds his breath, preparing to squeeze the trigger. But it’s windy outside, and he can’t afford a miss. What to do?”
- Ms. Boyle and POPSCI should pay more attention to the substance of the writing in their magazine before trying to infuse a sense of drama. In the photo that accompanies the article, the sniper team is nowhere near a window. The sniper team knows what it is doing with its craft, unlike the POPSCI staff.
It was just a matter of time before the art becames an ipod app. And then the shooter is replaced by remote controlled bots. And then independent AI driven cyborg. Science fiction isn’t.
In actual use, we launch the radiosondes every two hours in order to keep real time data available to the artillerymen. The upper level winds that affect the artillery projectiles the most do not change very much minute by minute. Remember that the projectile effectively integrates the winds over the entire flight of the projectile, so relatively small variations of horizontal extent of a mile or so cancel themselves out.
The system that is probably at use here likely measures scintillation near the ground. Snipers already use it and speak of it as the “mirage” or heat shimmer near the ground. A sophisticated system can measure the scintillation and see how fast it is moving across the line from the the sniper to the target, thus deriving effective cross wind integrated over the entire range.
This has the potential of being very effective, but the difficulty has been in engineering a system small and light enough that does not require a receiver at the target end. This is theoretically possible, it has just been difficult to do.
You gotta put yourself in these people's mind to understand. They are focused less and less on individual soldier's training and performance and more on things like accommodating women, gays, muslims, etc. characteristics that have NOTHING whatsoever to do with winning the battle.
These kinds of inventions will allow them to do that... Until the other side gets them too, then we'll be screwed.
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