Self-Aiming Sniper Rifles Coming Next Year

Popular Science ^ | 10/01/10 | Rebecca Boyle

[Doogle]

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?

Clearly, he needs a self-aiming gun. Fortunately, one should be available next year.

Using the One-Shot system, under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a new 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.

[wita]

Wow, when basic navigation is no longer taught, a heading is figured out by a machine and a sextant is a word in the dictionary. What is the result when you have battle damage or electrical failure reducing the “navigator” to a pile of junk?

If I remember the stories of my father in law, 93 years young and a 26 year navy vet from 1935 to 1961, young sailors learned how to use the sextant

[wita]

That’s some good shooting CPO.

My competitive shooting was all indoors with a .22 Hardly a comparison.

[Little Ray]

Its not self-aiming, its self adjusting; it adjusts the reticle for the conditions. They have ‘em on tanks. You still need a sniper and he still has to be be sneaky and have very steady hands.

[shibumi]

I know that.

I was just making fun of a poorly written headline.

[wita]

I remember they were already doing pluck-and-chuck in satellite trucks in the 80s.

Hadn’t heard that one. Fits like a glove. Not the ones OJ tried on at his trial.

I have repaired a number of Samsung flat screen TV’s. If you know how to wield a screw driver, can supervise taking the TV down from its wall mount without damage, remember where the six or so board connections go, (actually each has a different connector and short wires that reach only to the appropriate board connection), you too can pluck and chuck a TV.

[CPOSharky]

Did some 22 shooting in high school also. Ithaca High School at that. Aced a few matches there.

Moved to the Garand in the Navy. I have a Garand now and shot it in some J C Garand matches but it’s not accurized and it and I don’t do as well now.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Real snipers (well, the spotters) look at grass, trees, water ripples and blowing sand along the whole trajectory and factor that into the shot. I don't think our image recognition technology is up to that ability yet."

I think the "expert system" that would have to massage any data from the image recognition would be the hard part (not that image recognition is "easy" by any means). I think they're gonna need the human in the loop for a while yet.

[OneWingedShark]

>That’s right, dumb down the snipers so they don’t know how to shoot without this crutch. Not very smart in my opinion.

Actually it’s incredibly smart. One of the things that’s holding the government back, and just barely, is the skillset of people that it trained to defend the country: former snipers, special forces, Army, Marines, etc.

By making them dependent on high-tech things that, even if available to the general public are so high-priced nobody but the Bill Gates & Warren Buffets *could* afford them, they effectively cut the direct-applicability of that skillset within the civilian arena.

Perhaps I’m a little cynical or paranoid, but you have to admit that the reasoning fits.

[OneWingedShark]

>I think the “expert system” that would have to massage any data from the image recognition would be the hard part (not that image recognition is “easy” by any means). I think they’re gonna need the human in the loop for a while yet.

Let me put it this way: artificial intelligence has reached the point that it is on-par with an epileptic chicken.
{The image recognition -> ‘data massage’ system would be of AI level complexity; it would have to know what images to include and which are irrelevant.}

[antiRepublicrat]

Other than the downrange windage, this looks all pretty basic. You need sensors for humidity, air pressure, attitude (barrel pointing up or down), barrel temperature and airspeed and direction. Couple that with a ballistics database for that gun and that round, and it’s basic physics. I’ve been wanting to write something like this for years, but I can’t do the hardware bits.

[NY.SS-Bar9]

Just curious when you shot - I have competed at Camp Perry several times.

[wita]

Did some fun shooting a month ago at the local fun gun shoot. Took my Polytech M-14 semi, even though the shoot was a machine gun shoot. Need to do some work on my M-1 Garand. Seems there is a little slop for and aft in the stock at least a quarter inch of back and forth. Not good for accuracy, or inducing more slop.

it and I don’t do as well now.

I know what you mean, none of us are getting any younger.
Took me awhile to get comfortable in the sitting position.
Didn’t even try offhand, probably couldn’t hold the rifle up for long much less control breathing. Shot about 80 rounds of 308 and got a nice yellow and blue shoulder. It was still fun.

[meyer]

It was some time back in the late 1990's. I never shot at Camp Perry, but the 200 yard range I did compete in (briefly) was in Medina County, which isn't really very far.

My friend, who is much more dedicated to the sport, has shot at Camp Perry, and has been shooting at 600 yards with a built-up M-14 at a range east, maybe southeast of Akron.

[ExSoldier]

That’s right, dumb down the snipers so they don’t know how to shoot without this crutch. Not very smart in my opinion.

Too BLOODY right as my friends in the British army would say. Worse, it takes all the FUN and the eliteness out of the sniper's realm. When any dogface can snap a Jihadi at 2000 meters and there is no longer an art to the science then you'll lose the real HOG'S (Hunters of Gunmen)at a rate that will prove to be deadly for our troops once the technology fails and there are no trained human replacements on hand. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid IS as Stupid Does, I guess.

[MHGinTN]

Well and truly stated ... and you didn’t even mention that the tech gear will get into the worng hands and give the enemy an equality they cannot produce via training.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Let me put it this way: artificial intelligence has reached the point that it is on-par with an epileptic chicken."

Methinks you may be being overly optimistic.

[BushCountry]

For the tournaments they gave us M1 Match weapons. And yes I hit the target. We shoot from sunup to sundown. Rifles in the morning, pistols in the afternoon.

[Docbarleypop]

Most ships have a myriad of different systems to combat failure. Redundancy isn’t the right word for it. Plus most of the navigation guys and the deckapes took celestial navigation at the very least to be able to teach ESWS. It is true that most techs don’t fix the electrics anymore, we would need twice the amount of specialty techs on board just to fix one unit. Sailors are fighting men first and formost, give us the parts and leave everything else to those on the pier. And as a tech I could repair almost anything our best weapon (a Marine) could do to break itself!

[OneWingedShark]

>>”Let me put it this way: artificial intelligence has reached the point that it is on-par with an epileptic chicken.”
>
>Methinks you may be being overly optimistic.

Ah, why do you think that?

[archy]

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? Clearly, he needs a self-aiming gun.

Clearly, he needs more time on the range learning how to dope the wind.