"Guided bullets?"

P

Politically Incorrect

New member
I was watching a show last night on The Learning Channel about new weapons. Most of the show dealt with unmanned airplanes and land vehicles, but at the end of the show, they showed a Barrett .50 BMG rifle and talked about a bullet that would guide itself to the target.

Of course, a cut scene showed such a bullet "finding" a tank and blowing it to pieces. Perhaps TLC consulted Hollywood for that ending.

The principle of how it works is by using a ball bearing on the tip of the bullet and using wires to contract/expand such as muscles do in the arm to adjust the tip of the bullet.

My concern is if the rifling imparts spin on a bullet, and the tip is allowed to adjust itself, wouldn't the movement distract the rotation of the bullet?

And wouldn't it be difficult to actually move the tip due to its spinning? I remember getting a gyroscope when I was ten or so and once you got the thing spinning, the gyroscope would stabilize and remain in place. This made it harder to turn the gyroscope while it was spinning.

What do you think?
 
Saw the same program and wondered the same thing. Then they capped it off with a .50 Barret taking out an M1A - didn't seem credible having a guided .50 - when they showed artillery mockups - blowing up an Abrams with a turret seam hit.:confused:
 
The USN was, supposedly, doing reasearch on guided 5" projectiles a while ago. The project was called 'Deadeye,' or something like that. I'm not sure if it ever got past the 'gee-whiz, that'd be neat' phase before its funding was yanked.

In many ways I can see the point of the navy not paying for research in that area- if they have need for a very precise strike, Harpoon/SLAM or Tomahawk fits the bill. If they have a need for 'junk bashing' there is no need to make the venerable 5" naval gun any more complex or expensive. Its essentially an answer to the question no one asked.

Still, could you imagine an Iowa class BB sitting 20 miles off shore and raining salvoes of 9 Deadeye-16" projectiles on 'hardened' targets? Glory be!

Mike
 
I think the US Army also had a guided tank shell as well, Copperhead? or was it a missile fired from the gun tube? I cannot recall.

Mike
 
If I wanted to watch science fiction, then I would watch John Edwards on the sci-fi channel or reruns of old Star Trek episodes not something that was suppose to be educational.
 
The Army Uses Several guided Projectiles

The Copperhead is a 155mm artillery round. It's laser guided, expensive and doesn't work very well. A COLT (Combat Observation Laser Team) designates the target and the round is fired. It's currently being phased out.

In the 60's and 70's there was the Shilleleigh (sp?) missile which was 152 mm and fired out of the short cannon on the M551 Sheridan light tank and the M60A2 tank. It also wasn't very succsessful.

I'm not aware of any guided round smaller then that. I'm not sure of the size of the new Javelin, but I know it weighs about 47 pounds so it's not small either.

Jeff
 
crusader8s.jpg

XM2001 SELF-PROPELLED HOWITZER
http://www.army-technology.com/projects/crusader/index.html
Crusader's 155 mm self-propelled howitzer, XM2001, has
fully automated ammunition handling and firing that
allows firing of the 48 on-board rounds at rates of up to
10 rounds per minute to ranges in excess of 40 km. The
first rounds of a mission can be fired in 15 to 30 seconds.
Additionally Crusader has the capability to fire multiple
rounds to achieve simultaneous impact on target
(MRSI). One Crusader vehicle can fire up to 8 rounds to
strike a single target at the same time. The digital fire
control system calculates separate firing solutions for
each of the 8 projectiles.
Click to expand...
 
The navy was/is working on a munition for its 5" guns known as the ERGM (Extended Range Guided Munition). This thing was gun launched, but then self propels to hyper mach speeds, supposed to penetrate some ungodly amount of concrete. I think the major hitch was gyros and miniature electronics that could survive several hundred G's. I'm sure they will eventually be fielded. range 100+ nm I think.
 
.50 guided bullets are for real, and soon everybody will learn it.
In the mountains of Colorado, a special species of Micky Mouse
are raised...It's a top, very top on top of top secret project. This MM is small enough to sit inside the bullet and drive it to the target...Nothing is safe when enough MMs are raised and trained to drive those .50 cal. "deathmobils".
 
I didn't see the program so I don't have a clue what was shown, but is this an updated version of "wire-guided" munitions that have been around ~40 years?

These already come in man-portable, vehicle mounted and helo-deployed flavors. Never heard of any in .50BMG though. Doesn't make sense with today's technology.
 
dZ

That isn't using guided projectiles, thats simply using ballistics. They're varying elevation and powder charge and 'stepping down' the elevation as the gun fires a string of rounds. The end effect is a 'salvo' of rounds all hitting near-simultaneously.

Nifty, but not the same idea.

Mike
 
Jeff White is dead on about copperhead. I have shot about 60 of them as either and Forward Observer or Fire Direction Officer over the years. The M712 is a 155 mm, terminal homing smart munition that cost about $39,000 a projectile. There are 112 fire direction steps to fire the round in peacetime, so although it may be fun to shoot every once in a while it will have a FDO pulling his hair out. When, everything goes right it has an about a 80-85 percent hit rate (angle between target, gun and observer within parameter, low amounts of dust/smoke in the air, correct laser code set on both projectile and designator, laser illumination for at least 11 seconds prior to impact, cloud cover not too low, to name a few). The weapon has a 13.75lb Comp B shaped warhead that is quite effective on armor and high payoff target. As it stands now Copperhead is out of production, the army has transferred a large portion of its stockpile of them to the Marines so they can get SADARM.

The deadeye was a 5" (155 mm is 6.1") version of the copperhead. Since NGF are rifles/guns instead of howitzers, the problems associated go up tremendously because of muzzle velocity, ship movement and angle of fall. The dead eye was canceled years ago.

The current trend is for smart munitions that don't require terminal illumination. Weapons like ERGM and its 155 mm counter part XM982 Excalibur, don't hit specific target but are programed to hit certain locations. Once mensurated grids are placed into the guidance system, the round uses a combination of a strap down inertial navigation and GPS to guide to the target. Since these weapons are totally guided they can also have a shaped trajectory, flying offsets from the firing platform to reduce the chances a counter battery radar can locate the firing gun. Also the shaping allows the round to achieve the optimal pattern when ICM submunitions are employed. The big problem with ERGM and XM982 is that currently they are beyond our technological capability. The ERGM was supposed to start fielding FY 2000, but because of issues in firing shock destroying the guidance system has yet to have a successful gun launch.
The other big examples of guided munitions that have/will shortly hit the inventory is the SADARM and BAT. The SADARM operated like a conventional round, but ejects terminal homing submunitions (two in the case of 155 mm) at a predesigned time along its trajectory. The submunitions, stabilize themselves via a drogue chute. The chute also spins the submunition, so a MM wave radar and IR sensor can acquire a target. Once the target is acquired, an EFP fires shooting a penetrator that can go through all current and planned armor.
BAT is an ATACMS Block III delivered munition. On separation from the missile, 13 BATS deploy parachutes to slow their decent, additionally acoustic sensor deploy and start listening for vehicles. Once they hear a vehicle, the munition classifies it and if the target meets the preprogrammed criteria, the BAT flies to the target, acquired it with an IR sensor and strikes the target, detonating a tandem shaped charge to kill the target. Because of the size and velocity that BAT strikes with, inert warhead version have been able to kill test target via kinetic energy alone.
 
Cooperhead

I worked on the orginal guidance internals for the Cooperhead. They had to withstand an initial 20,000g acceleration force. Talk about testing to destruction!!!
 
20,000 Gs really isn't that bad. When they were experimenting with VT fuzes in World War Two, one of the first problems they had was 90 mm AA guns had 30,000 Gs of set back. The worst problem they had to solve for was since they were firing fixed vice separate loading ammo was side slap, when round hit the rifling and started to spin, it was about 8 times that of the G forces of set back.
Even today with some of the relatively dumb fuzes and munitions you see problems of set back. Charge Super 8 (M203 series) actually be fired with the standard HE round because it would crush the base plate of the round. The 155 mm RAP round for the longest time didn't have a VT fuze that could be used because firing shock destroying the circuit boards, finally the M732A2 was fielded that could take high charge firing involved. So physics itself is sometime the a hardest thing to overcome.
 
STLRN,
I seem to remember talk of another type of Arty fired munition...
I dont remember its name - but it was pretty cool. 155MM Rocket assisted shell. It had an optical sensor and a computer... The shell went up and at the apex when it turned back down it started to "LOOL" for enemy vehicles and looked for pattern recognition matches in its library of enemy vehicle shapes.

You know of anything like that? I remember that being talked about one day when I was at Ft. Knox for a little while.

This smart .50 cal shell... I dont see any advatage of it over training real soldiers to be good shots. Of course the military is doing whatever it can to avoid the image of a man with a rifle. Last 3 different Army commercials I have seen - not one gun.
 
George
Haven't heard anything in a long time about optic guided rounds, generally optics, excluding IR are too easy to hide from. The new brilliant munitions have a limited ability to decide on what to strike, but there are a lot of problems currently with them so it will be years before you see them.

The army had a great commercial a while back it showed the rangers doing a raid, but the scuttle butt around here was it was canceled because it wasn't inclusive enough. We still have rifles in a lot of our posters, but our TV ads, all seem to have swords in them these days.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top