Darpa Moves Closer To a ‘Smart Bullet’

It’s an understatement to say that being in a sniper team is a high-pressure job. You’ve got to calculate wind resistance, distance, bullet trajectory and other physics obstacles in a few instants.Then you’ve got to squeeze off the shot — sometimes from hundreds of yards away.  So the futurists at Darpa figure the sharpshooters could use some “smart” bullets to help the snipers out.

On Thursday, Teledyne Technologies received a $25.45 million contract from Darpa to design a .50 caliber bullet that can better hit moving targets while the wind swells. It’s part of the next stage of the EXtreme ACcuracy Tasked Ordnance project, or Exacto, begun in 2007 to give the military what Teledyne chairman Robert Mehrabian termed “ultra-high precision and affordable guided weapons” in a prepared statement. It’s show-and-prove time: Teledyne’s got to deliver its prototype bullets by September 2012.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/ready-fire-aim-darpa-moves-closer-to-a-smart-bullet/#ixzz12qYt7Fzr