Sandia Labs’ bullet doesn’t miss: krqe.com

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have invented a bullet that guides itself to the target. Sandia has wide expertise at miniature technology, and the bullet works like a tiny guided missile.

The patented design doesn’t shoot straight. Instead of a spiral rotation, the bullet twists and turns to guide itself towards a laser directed point. It can make up to thirty corrections per second while in the air. Jim Jones, distinguished member of technical staff, and his team of engineers at Sandia Labs think the .50-caliber bullets would work well with military machine guns so soldiers could hit their mark faster and with precision.

Great News! As long as we can kill more efficiently, I am all for it! Wonder what one of them little buggers cost?



  1. bobbo, the pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist says:

    Smart bullets for dumb politicians and order following troops? An evil mix for sure. but the target needs to be laser painted–missing the trick there of the killer laser but that is being worked on as well. Killer lasers with exploding bullets will be the weapon of choice, all miniaturized to fit in a pair of goggles.

    Meanwhile, back home, we will still be arguing about whether or not someone who is half black is also half human or fully non-hooman.

    Monkeys and Marvels.

  2. Dallas says:

    Should sell well with Teapublicans for coon hunting!

  3. Tippis says:

    Pff. That’s 27 year old tech!
    http://youtube.com/watch?v=7d6Djog2B-c

  4. msbpodcast says:

    Fun with DARPA money, but Ragnar Benson* wouldn’t be worried about this at all.

    It requires somebody to paint the target with a laser.

    Great idea: self-guided ammunition.

    Lousy idea: painting the traget with a laser beam requires a LONG exposure time and ideal visibility conditions to the target in one (the shooter) or possibly two (a separate spotter) directions. Weapons’ smoke fired by the target during a firefight would reveal the location of the laser beam obscuring the target and providing the possibility of dodging or reflecting the beam off of he target with a simple mirror. Targeting against somebody obscured with a multi-faceted or a rapidly rotating mirror would render the spotter strategy useless.

    Lousier idea: in a firefight with multiple targets, multiple painters and multiple missiles would fall prey to the fog of war. It takes the problems listed above and multiplies them exponentially.

    *) Google him 🙂

  5. bobbo, the pragmatic existential evangelical anti-theist says:

    “Sandia Labs think the .50-caliber bullets would work well with military machine guns so soldiers could hit their mark faster and with precision.” /// I’m no military guy but I’d think its best application would be to turn every grunt into a sharpshooter? Mount the laser on any standard issue gun and give it to the troops.

    Waste of time to mount on a machine gun that works just by saturating the air. What are you planning on?—one guy with a machine gun and 50 spotters?

    Dumb.

    51 guys each with a laser equiped smart rifle just telescoping the horizon looking for targets?

    The cold calculation of war.

  6. orchidcup says:

    Surely there are countermeasures for a laser-guided mini-missile.

    Maybe the enemy should hold up a mirror and send the mini-missile back to where it came from.

    That would be good for a few laughs.

    • Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

      In the news:

      China successfully tests anti-bullet bullet to shoot down laser guided bullets in mid-air.

  7. plarsen says:

    This goes with the tanks and the FEMA coffins? And we are in 2012…

  8. Kent says:

    Should be very useful for the coming police state. Hope this guy gets a taste of his creation just like Mr. Guillotine did.

  9. Brian says:

    totally impractical for conventional combat. each round would be several orders of magnitude more expensive than a conventional round, and the complications with having to paint a target, even momentarily, would be substantial. The only thing such a munition would be good for would be sniping and assassination, and I guarantee they’ve also come up with a way to get the range up over a mile for that purpose.

    • MartinJJ says:

      What’s your point? As long as you keep paying for more wars, they don’t care about the costs.

  10. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    This technology was in the first prototype for laser eye surgery.

  11. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    In the news:

    “Stray Bullet Removes Penis of “David” in Lecture Hall as Art History Professor Uses Laser Pen to Highlight Scrotum.”

  12. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    In the news:

    Hamas successfully launches laser guided bullet against Israel.

  13. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    In the news:

    China successfully tests anti-bullet bullet to shoot down laser guided bullets in mid-air.

    (re-posted from nested purgatory, by a popular vote of 1 – 0.)

    • orchidcup says:

      In the news:

      North Korea successfully tests anti-anti-bullet to shoot down Chinese anti-bullets that shoot down laser-guided bullets in mid-air.

  14. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    In the news:

    South Korea’s anti-anti-anti bullet backfires.

  15. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    In the news:

    “Death toll shockingly climbs as Bungie adds laser-guided bullet feature to Halo”

    Players often have no choice but to commit suicide…

  16. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    The Amazing pace of Technology.
    We interrupt this news with breaking news!

    Laser guided bullets are replaced with laser guided attack kittens.

    Private Brown comments, “It’s really funny seeing the kitties claw a run up and down a Taliban and then claw their face off when I make little swirlies with my pointer.”

  17. Skeptic: Post # ≥1 says:

    That’s it folks, my drugs are wearing off.

  18. George says:

    Toys for a bankrupt country that is spending itself into financial oblivion.

    As soon as the specs for the laser target designator leak out, a sophisticated enemy can construct a laser detector that could be worn by their own combatants to warn them when they are lased. The military already uses the MILES system for training purposes that detects simulated laser weapon fire. Likely, a tweak of that system will make for a dandy countermeasure against this.

    Obviously this system is envisioned to be employed against civilians and other non-traditional enemies who would not have access to such things. i.e. indigenous peoples that we have deemed a threat to America.

  19. soundwash says:

    -let’s hope the all the test rounds seek out the people
    who created them first..

    -s

  20. deowll says:

    If you have to ask the price you can’t afford it and this thing has a wonderful way to be misdirected.

  21. sargasso_c says:

    Un-sportsman like.

  22. B. Dog says:

    It looks like the old shell game. Guns are already accurate enough out to a good distance. With this system a sniper team aims a laser and a gun and Sandia collects development money for a system that is “50% completed”.

  23. Animby says:

    Bobbo: “turn every grunt into a sharpshooter?”

    As a combat veteran I can report that around 90% of the time, you don’t actually target the enemy. You just shoot in the general direction of where you think he is. This might be nice for a sniper but, at 50 caliber size your average grunt isn’t going to carry very many! Too damn heavy. And shrinking a guidance system down from .50 to .223 is a long way to go.

    A machine gun seems to me to be the worst application for such ammo. As Bobby says, a machine gun works by throwing out massive amounts of lead. It just isn’t very often aimed. If the laser dot is on some guy’s forehead, why do you need to send a dozen shots down range?

    In any case, what’s wrong with teaching marksmanship? After all, if you can put a laser on the target, you ought to be able to put a bullet on it. We didn’t have laser sites when I was shooting at people but if it’s handheld it’s gonna shake. Seen any power point presentations recently?

    If it is successfully developed, I see this as a specialty weapon, only. You don’t send a barrage of thousand dollar bullets when a hail storm of $1 bullets will do just as well.

  24. Wow – and here Angelina Jolie spent all that time to learn how to bend a shot around a person in Wanted. Bet she’s pissed.

  25. clifffton says:

    ReadyKW:
    It was done before by of all people Gene Simmons in runaway with an awesome hand cannon. Michael Crichton written and directed. Pretty cool for 1984 🙂

    • Mike says:

      I thought of that movie too! I think I might have to Netflix that now.

      I want one of those spider things too. 🙂

    • Vaslo says:

      Dammit, you beat me to it!
      —————————————-
      Wow, creepily looks exactly like and acts like the bullet from the 80s classic Runaway:

      http://imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

      Gene Simmons should have starred in some more movies!

  26. MartinJJ says:

    Mass production in China will make them cheap. For the same amount they even engrave everyone’s name on the bullets at forehand.

  27. the answer says:

    A bullet flies at such a speed and those tiny wings in my mind would probably not do much.

  28. Rob Leather says:

    I can only imagine how much each “bullet” costs. Which kind of reminds me of that Chris Rock standup routine.


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