Imagine Siegy with a Judge Dredd style Lawgiver

[Viking]

http://news.yahoo.com/sandia-labs-engineers-create-self-guided-bullet-161745833.html

Sandia Labs engineers create 'self-guided' bullet
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN | Associated Press – Thu, Feb 2, 2012

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Figuring out how to pack a processor and other electronics into a machine gun bullet has been a challenge for engineers at Sandia National Laboratories, so weapons experts say the miniature guidance system the lab has developed is a breakthrough.

Three years in the making, the bullet prototype represents another step toward a next-generation battlefield that scientists and experts expect to be saturated with technology and information.

"In the laboratory, I'm able to make machines so incredibly small it kind of boggles my mind," said Red Jones, one of the Sandia researchers who helped develop the laser-guided .50-caliber bullet. "Where we're headed, we're going to be limited only by our imagination."

Developing more precise weaponry has been a mission for government and industry scientists for decades. Most recently, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded tens of millions of dollars in contracts to companies to develop guided ammunition for snipers and special scopes that account for crosswinds and other environmental variables.

The idea behind Sandia Labs' bullet is rooted more in the M2, a belt-fed machine gun that became standard issue in the U.S. Army nearly 80 years ago. Pairing the M2 with the guided bullet would allow soldiers to hit their mark faster and with precision.

At 4 inches long and a half-inch in diameter, the bullet directs itself like a tiny guided missile and can hit a target more than a mile away.

It's designed to twist and turn, making up to 30 corrections per second.

"Everybody thought it was too difficult to make things small enough. We knew we could deal with that. The other thing was it was going to be too complicated and expensive," he said. "We came up with an innovative way around that to make it stupid and cheap and still pretty good."

Jones and his fellow researchers had initial success testing the design in computer simulations and in field tests of prototypes, built from commercially available parts.

With most of the hard science done, Jones said the next step is for Sandia to partner with a private company to complete testing of the prototype and bring a guided bullet to the marketplace.

More than $1 million in research and development grants have taken the project this far.

Computer simulations showed an unguided bullet under real-world conditions could miss a target more than a half mile away by nearly 10 yards. But according to the patent, a guided bullet would get within eight inches.

The design for the bullet includes an optical sensor to detect a laser beam on a target. The sensor sends information to guidance and control electronics that use an algorithm in an eight-bit central processing unit to command electromagnetic actuators. The actuators steer the fins that guide the bullet.

Jones said there are still some engineering problems to be sorted out that will make the bullet more practical — for example, it will have to be tough enough to be dropped off the back of a truck and still work.

Even more innovation is needed for the manufacturing process.

"What we want to do is make it cheap enough to make it cost effective for the military to use in a machine gun," he said. "It's not going to be millions of dollars, but it's not going to be a buck a piece either."

The technology has captured the interest of weapons experts, both for the successful miniaturization of guidance systems that are usually reserved for missiles and for the potential benefits of precision.

"All of a sudden now you've got a way to eliminate the collateral damage issues. From that perspective, this starts to get interesting," said Adam Firestone, an Army veteran, instructor and a weapons system engineer.

Firestone and other experts said the battlefield of the future will surely include more capabilities for guiding bullets and bombs, but what will make the difference will be communication improvements and intelligence sharing systems that take advantage of the high-tech weapons while linking each soldier together.

Defense department researchers and contractors are already developing flying nano-bots that can stream live video, contact lenses that would allow soldiers to focus simultaneously on virtual digital images and their surroundings, and smartphone apps that help with tactical operations.

"Where we're going is to a world where the individual soldier, Marine, sailor or airman lives in a bath of knowledge. The world would be surreal in the original sense of super real. When you look at something, you see what you need to see when you need to see it," Firestone said. "They will have the ability to make decisions more accurately and that will have a significant impact."

Course correction in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C4G6yjo9LaU

A short video presentation. Shit like this freaks me out from time to time, but I am reassured that it's the good guys that have this kit.

[Fireblade]

Christ, I wonder how much those bullets cost.

That video was too short. I was expecting a watermelon at the end.

[Siege]

The Sandia bullet?
Still years away, and there are few things they need to fix.

[Razgovory]

They cut out the best part!  I wonder why the shot releases all those shards.  Is it a sabot?

[Brazen]

What odd coverage, for once the press release was more enticing. The fact it was developed by two hunters for starters! And it answers Raz's question - they are indeed sabots. And a real video of it in action rather than the NMA.tv animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLwVVYV3_K4

Sandia's self-guided bullet prototype can hit target a mile away

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M — Take two Sandia National Laboratories engineers who are hunters, get them talking about the sport and it shouldn't be surprising when the conversation leads to a patented design for a self-guided bullet that could help war fighters. (Click here for a video showing the prototype's flight.)

Sandia researchers Red Jones and Brian Kast and their colleagues have invented a dart-like, self-guided bullet for small-caliber, smooth-bore firearms that could hit laser-designated targets at distances of more than a mile (about 2,000 meters).

"We have a very promising technology to guide small projectiles that could be fully developed inexpensively and rapidly," Jones said.

Sandia is seeking a private company partner to complete testing of the prototype and bring a guided bullet to the marketplace.

Researchers have had initial success testing the design in computer simulations and in field tests of prototypes, built from commercially available parts, Jones said.

While engineering issues remain, "we're confident in our science base and we're confident the engineering-technology base is there to solve the problems," he said.

Sandia's design for the four-inch-long bullet includes an optical sensor in the nose to detect a laser beam on a target. The sensor sends information to guidance and control electronics that use an algorithm in an eight-bit central processing unit to command electromagnetic actuators. These actuators steer tiny fins that guide the bullet to the target.

Most bullets shot from rifles, which have grooves, or rifling, that cause them to spin so they fly straight, like a long football pass. To enable a bullet to turn in flight toward a target and to simplify the design, the spin had to go, Jones said.

The bullet flies straight due to its aerodynamically stable design, which consists of a center of gravity that sits forward in the projectile and tiny fins that enable it to fly without spin, just as a dart does, he said.

Computer aerodynamic modeling shows the design would result in dramatic improvements in accuracy, Jones said. Computer simulations showed an unguided bullet under real-world conditions could miss a target more than a half mile away (1,000 meters away) by 9.8 yards (9 meters), but a guided bullet would get within 8 inches (0.2 meters), according to the patent.

Plastic sabots provide a gas seal in the cartridge and protect the delicate fins until they drop off after the bullet emerges from the firearm's barrel.

The prototype does not require a device found in guided missiles called an inertial measuring unit, which would have added substantially to its cost. Instead, the researchers found that the bullet's relatively small size when compared to guided missiles "is helping us all around. It's kind of a fortuitous thing that none of us saw when we started," Jones said.

As the bullet flies through the air, it pitches and yaws at a set rate based on its mass and size. In larger guided missiles, the rate of flight-path corrections is relatively slow, so each correction needs to be very precise because fewer corrections are possible during flight. But "the natural body frequency of this bullet is about 30 hertz, so we can make corrections 30 times per second. That means we can overcorrect, so we don't have to be as precise each time," Jones said.

Testing has shown the electromagnetic actuator performs well and the bullet can reach speeds of 2,400 feet per second, or Mach 2.1, using commercially available gunpowder. The researchers are confident it could reach standard military speeds using customized gunpowder.

And a nighttime field test, in which a tiny light-emitting diode, or LED, was attached to the bullet showed the battery and electronics can survive flight, Jones said.

Researchers also filmed high-speed video of the bullet radically pitching as it exited the barrel. The bullet pitches less as it flies down range, a phenomenon known to long-range firearms experts as "going to sleep." Because the bullet's motions settle the longer it is in flight, accuracy improves at longer ranges, Jones said.

"Nobody had ever seen that, but we've got high-speed video photography that shows that it's true," he said.

Potential customers for the bullet include the military, law enforcement and recreational shooters.

In addition to Jones and Kast, Sandia researchers who helped develop the technology are: engineer Brandon R. Rohrer, aerodynamics expert Marc W. Kniskern, mechanical designer Scott E. Rose, firearms expert James W. Woods and Ronald W. Greene, a guidance, control and simulation engineer.

https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/bullet/

[Viking]

Christ, I wonder how much those bullets cost.

That video was too short. I was expecting a watermelon at the end.

they cost less than hellfire missiles... I suppose mounting one of these on a drone would result in dead hajis for less bad pr than high explosives.

[DontSayBanana]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxjnl1yuXk