Self-guided bullets

[Rabid]

Well, my bad, I hadn't re-read the article before posting.

I share your curiosity as to what are the maximum performances of the system when you push its limits... Though I guess we'll have to wait and see to know, as I think such informations are likely to be classified for the time being.


To be clear, I have to say I would tend to see this weapon system used more by special operation forces (SOCOM or CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup) than by the regular armed forces.

[PeZook]

It might be cost-effective, but for other reasons entirely: by making your potential enemies extend patrolled perimeters around their important facilities when visited by VIPs - because suddenly it turns out CIA snipers can reliably kill the VIP from much further out than previously thought.

So, even if it is never deployed, it makes a potential opponent spend money

[Rabid]

And here we go again with the whole "arms race" thingy mentality... *sigh*

( )

[Sea Skimmer]

As for the price, in the link someone above posted, the people of the XM-25 project claimed their grenades with an integrated electronic "flight computer" would cost roughly $12 a piece once mass produced. So for a small silver-bullet of the degree of electronic/mecatronic complexity and miniaturization its performances suggest, I'd ass-pull a guess for a unitary price of ~20-40 dollars if mass-produced, or ~100-200 dollar a piece if it isn't mass-produced and made "on demand" only.

Yeah likely the 100 dollar range. Really, its kind of hard to make something that small all that expensive simply because all the custom tooling ect.. needed is also quite small and it just cannot be that many components.

Compare with the cost-effectiveness of the other solution(s) you mentioned, and see if this "silver-bullet" is an improvement as far as cost-effectiveness goes for its intended purpose. I can't tell myself. But in the other hand, if the US's DoD felt like sinking, like, a billion dollar in the project maybe it was because they felt a need for it ? Or maybe they just did it for the lulz.
I honestly don't know.

Lockheed got 14.5 million for this project, another company got 9.5 million and has yet to show results. The cost isn't just about what the value of the target is, its also about letting snipers reliability fire from much longer ranges, thus keeping them alive and making them easier to deploy. That means you are considering stuff like what are the odds we loose a helicopter trying to rescue a sniper team caught close to the enemy ect... which can turn into some very high costs very quickly. That’s before you even consider that in many cases the target of a sniper is someone who its directly threatening other US forces in turn.

Also worth considering that if this works out, it’d be an excellent weapon for unmanned ground and air vehicles. Other advanced sniper technology is also being pursued, such as a sniper scope with a built in atmospheric condition measuring laser and fire control computer to vastly increase accuracy with conventional ammunition.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

I wonder if a bullet fired at an indirect trajectory over long range would retain enough energy to actually kill someone. I mean, what you would in essence be doing is controlling the flight path of a falling bullet. My guess is that it would be a hit and miss things in terms of actually killing someone.

It was called a Lazy Dog during Vietnam. There are also flechettes that date back all the way to WWI, and variants of the weapon appear in essentially every armed conflict since.

[Sea Skimmer]

Indirect fire with bullets works fine, in WW1 they set up whole indirect barrages using water cooled machine guns with artillery style sights firing ~100,000 rounds per machine gun per day. The barrages would be aimed with groups of about ten guns at junctions in the enemy trench systems to disrupt attempts to bring up reinforcements. At any given time several guns would be firing while others changed barrels or just paused because even 100,000 rounds won't let you truly fire all the time.

The bullets might not be strictly as lethal as one fired directly, but its still more then enough to kill people.

[Sephirius]

Indirect fire with bullets works fine, in WW1 they set up whole indirect barrages using water cooled machine guns with artillery style sights firing ~100,000 rounds per machine gun per day. The barrages would be aimed with groups of about ten guns at junctions in the enemy trench systems to disrupt attempts to bring up reinforcements. At any given time several guns would be firing while others changed barrels or just paused because even 100,000 rounds won't let you truly fire all the time.

The bullets might not be strictly as lethal as one fired directly, but its still more then enough to kill people.

This is the use I thought of as soon as I saw the article, an HMG (or a whole bunch of them ) behind hard cover or at an obscene range (or both) firing at a lazed target.