DARPA is working on a bullet that is guided. This will make snipers much more powerful. Eventually it will help all American troops. And after that, it will reach enemy forces--even ill-trained rabble. What then?
A sniper can reliably overcome the effects of distance, though the act of collecting needed data (distance, wind speed, humidity) to determine course corrections delays the shot. One method of simplifying this is to use a ballistic computer that automatically collects the data and projects an adjusted aiming point onto a sniper scope display. Another is to make the bullet itself a guided weapon.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has taken the latter approach. EXACTO, or Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance bullets turns .50 caliber bullets into guided rounds capable of zeroing in on a target. Although DARPA is mum on how it does this, other sites report that the technology involves optical sensors in the nose of the bullet and fins capable of adjusting the bullet’s flight path in the tail. The optical sensor apparently homes in on a spot illuminated by a laser designator. The guidance system is similar to laser-guided weapons such as the Maverick and Hellfire laser-guided missiles. The bullet is even capable of making some remarkably sharp course corrections.
Initially, given the increased American emphasis on snipers in infantry units, this will be great, as this quoted part of a Strategypage post describes:
In Afghanistan and Iraq the locals quickly got to know when American troops were fighting in the area. They were the ones firing single shots. The other guys fired their AK-47s on full auto. But it was the sparser American firepower that dominated. Better training, and high tech sights, made the U.S. troops very accurate. This led to wider use of snipers, with up to ten percent of American troops qualified and equipped for this kind of shooting. Snipers alone have greatly changed American infantry tactics.
And when it reaches all American infantry, this long trend of pushing precision down the military echelons will be astounding.
But when the enemy has it--even ill-trained militias and insurgents--it will require a massive change in how America prepares infantry for combat, replacing shooting training time with tactical training time for troops and lower level leaders, as I wrote in the USNI Blog a couple years ago:
The May 1972 “Battle of the Bridges” in which U.S. aircraft destroyed targets that had long resisted dumb munitions announced the arrival of a new precision method of waging war that promised “If you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can destroy it.” That was described as the first phase of a revolutionary change in the nature of warfare.[22] That battle won with expensive but effective “remotely piloted munitions” fired from expensive planes by expensively and extensively trained air crews has filtered down to the level of rifles carried by even ill-trained individual fighters. Will U.S. Marines be prepared to win on such a battlefield of tomorrow?
Yes, technology will still give U.S. Marines a competitive shooting advantage if Marines have expensive guided rounds while enemy combatants have cheaper DBC[*] rifles. But the relative edge based on technology will be smaller than the current advantage produced by trained soldiers firing single aimed shots versus ill-trained enemies firing full auto with little thought to aiming. Just as air crews, ship captains, and tankers have adapted to precision fire capabilities, Marine infantry must now adapt to the same challenges to ensure battlefield dominance.
We're reaching the point when American tactical superiority based on individual marksmanship will need to be realigned and based on superior tactical training and expertise.
*I called rifles with high-tech aiming equipment but not using guided shells as the DARPA story describes "dumb but controlled" rifles, or DBC rifles.
UPDATE: Oops. I mistakenly wrote that my article was in Proceedings. I originally submitted it there and just brainlocked when I typed it.
