A recent article looks at guided bullets under development. This is a really big deal and a danger to our infantry quality dominance.
First off, it’s classified, and we don’t know if it is in use with American forces, covert or otherwise, in some part of the world.
Secondly, experts say this technology could very well revolutionize the job of military sniper.
Lastly, imagine a bullet as a self-guided weapon, able to make course corrections in mid-flight.
It sounds a bit crazy, but apparently this is a pet project of those mad scientists at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
Guided bullets will be revolutionary for far more than snipers:
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.
Say, look what the Marines are doing:
The Marine Corps is conducting a series of pilot training programs designed to enhance the capabilities of infantry elements.
The new course reflects Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger’s planning guidance contained in recent publications, including “Force Design 2030,” in which he concurred with findings that “current entry level and advanced infantry training programs and policies will not meet future demands of our infantry elements.”
I mentioned this Marine training trend before. While it is directly related to dispersed operations in support of the Navy's sea control mission, it is also applicable to direct infantry combat against even poor quality troops with only rudimentary shooting technology.
*DBC, or dumb but controlled, is a term for precision-aimed but non-guided rounds that I coined for the article.
