By Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
Purpose: Hit a target from miles away (with self-adjusting, four inch long, .50 caliber bullet using optical guidance and sensors) regardless of man-made obstacles, aim-target adjustment-movement or imperfect conditions like weather.
Six years in the works and a long-held dream is finally coming true. Last spring, DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office tested program EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance), bringing smart bullet technology closer to the field.
The special bullet is the first success of its kind. It has sensors of its own, tiny fin stabilizers and actuators that can make 30 adjustments per second while traveling twice the speed of sound over a mile in distance from a high-powered round. The ‘magic bullet’ can do what no other small arms bullet in the world can do: it can change target or direction in midflight. Can act as a fire and forget approach to smart bullet technology.
One Shot XG is another like-minded program to increase sniper accuracy in harsh conditions. The One Shot program allows snipers to readjust shots with their scope measuring the downrange profile and environmental factors like weather in order to calculate the best aim point for the intended shot to reach target. This approach offers remote guidance but there is no reason why both could not be used simultaneously in the future, with the shooter having the capability to alter the bullet trajectory if needed or rely on the bullets self-guiding sensors alone to adjust to target.
This is just the beginning. Both longer and shorter range, programmable, smart bullets are expected as well. If the maximum distance with a great marksman and this technology is a 1.5 mile maximum, then the future will be to increase the distance the bullet can travel with accuracy over another mile or so. Also, material science breakthroughs have allowed the conception and testing of bullets that can penetrate walls with explosive tips overhead or through windows of an enemy or group of combatants as well.
While the EXACTO and One Shot scope technologies are a clear win for capabilities and missions; especially in hostage, rescue and targeted terrorist kill shots in crowds, like all others, it is another step into a scarier world.
In this new world, our political leaders are placed in even greater risk through its proliferation over time. While not a weapons of mass destruction or CBRN concern, smart bullets and modern tactical weaponry, as they become common in the future, will place a heavy burden on executive protection and will require greater defensive technologies not available now to match the future threat. Those might include greater mobile sensor units, explosive foam, for example, to shield VIPs.
Smart bullet implementation may actually increase the enemy advantage more in the short to mid-term as rival states steal American tech or learn to produce and sell them to criminals and terrorist groups. In the hands of the terrorist or clever political agent, wars can be staged through political assassinations much easier, where one state is pitted against another whose diplomatic relations are weak; and all for the advantage of the agent provocateur in service of the third party gains.
Regardless of a sophisticated setup, while extremely difficult now, smart bullet technology will offer enemy shooters a multi-mile safety advantage too, where they can snipe key figures.
However the future looks, as usual, it just got more complicated and uncertain for anyone walking around outside; on or off the battlefield.
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