Sandia Labs Patents Self-Guided Bullet

Sandia Labs Self-Guided Bullet: Laser-Guided .50-Caliber Saboted Round Coming for the U.S. Ordnance M2HB-QCB (Quick-Change Barrel) “Ma Deuce” Heavy Machine Gun (HMG)? Meet the Possible Precision .50-Cal. Projectile of the Future

Published by David Crane in Ammunition on February 6th, 2012

 By David Crane
defrev (at) gmail (dot) com

February 6, 2012

Sandia labs is currently in the process of developing a “self-guided” bullet, specifically a laser-guided .50-Caliber round, that Gene Simmon’s character “Luther” in the movie Runaway would REALLY like. And who could blame him? The projectile is a saboted round that guides itself by optical sensor in the nose that tracks a laser designator, and utilizes fins to make course corrections and stabilize itself. And the kicker is it can do this out of a smooth bore, so no need for barrel rifling! The claimed effective range is approximately 2,000 meters, or more than a mile.

God only knows how much this little .50-Cal. guided projectile’s gonna’ cost, but logic would dictate that it has be significantly more expensive than a conventional .50 BMG round, even the Raufoss Mk-211 armor-piercing/incendiary round.

But the future costs, and the future looks pretty damn exciting according to Sandia researcher Red Jones, who’s also one of the researchers who helped develop the laser-guided .50-caliber bullet. “In the laboratory, I’m able to make machines so incredibly small it kind of boggles my mind,” said Jones. “Where we’re headed, we’re going to be limited only by our imagination,” he adds.

The end game is to load smooth-bore semi-auto rifles and even a smooth-bore version of the U.S. Ordnance M2HB-QCB (Quick Change Barrel) “Ma Deuce” .50 BMG heavy machine gun (HMG) up with the new precision-guided wonder rounds, and start raining relentless .50-caliber pain down on them at long with peerless and profound precision, using the minimum number of rounds required to neutralize the target. The M2HB is accurate enough and has a slow enough cyclic rate of fire that you can use it to hit long-range targets effectively with a single conventional .50 BMG round– but you need to know what you’re doing. But, sometimes you need multiple rounds to neutralize the target. A laser-guided round that works reliablybremoves the skill requirement, and would make hitting moving long-range targets a breeze.

The only cost-saving aspect to a self-guiding precision .50-caliber round is its one-shot/one-kill aspect, though. The question is, how many conventional .50 BMG rounds does it take to neutralize the target versus that one laser-guided round, and what’s the cost comparison for that kill? Understand that there are now advanced combat optics and laser aimers (aiming lasers) for light, medium and heavy machine guns that allow a soldier to dial in rounds on the target very quickly if he/she isn’t able to hit the target with the first shot. Back in July (2011), DefenseReview (DR) got to run the U.S. Ordnance M2HB-QCB with a Raytheon Elcan SpectrHR wide-view dual red dot combat optic (optical gunsight) mounted on it at the company’s test range, and the combo worked well.

Of course, the Sandia Labs guided-round’s combat viability is predicated on it actually working as advertised, and working reliably, ideally every single time its fired.

Ultimately, war is a financial transaction, and everything comes down to a cost/affordability vs enemy damage/cost assessment. What kind of financial transaction is occurring on each shot of the guided projectile vs conventional projectiles, and how much damage are you costing the enemy?

Organization Contact Info:

Sandia National Laboratories, California
PO Box 969
Livermore, CA 94551-0969

non-mail deliveries:
7011 East Avenue
Livermore, CA 94550

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News media help line: (505) 844-4902 (for members of the news media)

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Source: DefenseReview.com (http://s.tt/15Aun)

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20120206/BUSINESS/302060008/Engineers-create-self-guided-ammunition

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Figuring out how to pack a processor and other electronics into a machine gun bullet has been a challenge 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 represents another step toward a next-generation battlefield expected 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.

Developing more precise weaponry has been a mission for decades. Most recently, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded tens of millions of dollars to develop guided ammunition for snipers and special scopes that account for 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 marks 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.

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

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

Sandia Labs Patents Self-Guided Bullet - RifleShooter: "A team of scientists in New Mexico have invented the unthinkable: a bullet that doesn’t miss.

According to KRQE-TV, scientists at Sandia Labs in Albuquerque have invented a self-guided bullet that doesn’t miss its target.

The .50-caliber bullet, which behaves more like a miniature guided missile, doesn’t have a spiral rotation, but instead twists and turns to guide itself toward a laser-directed point and is capable of making up to 30 corrections in the air — it could be a perfect fit for military machine guns, scientists said.

“We’ve tested gunpowders to see if we can get muzzle velocity for military interest,” said Jim Jones, a member of the Sandia Labs technical staff. “We’ve tested various electronic components to see if they would survive the launch.”

For more details on this exciting breakthrough, check out our friends over at Guns & Ammo!

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