DARPA Working On Self Steering Bullet For Next Defence Project

Think Angelina Jolie shooting curved trajectory shots with her gun in the movie Wanted. Well, the end result is not exactly fictional anymore (the technique is). I recently stumbled upon the following video demonstrating DARPA’s new self-steering bullet technology and it blew my mind.

The video shows new missile-like self-steering projectiles hitting a moving target, only this time these are not missiles but 0.5 calibre sized sniper bullets (0.5 inches internal diameter of the gun’s barrel). As seen in the video, enabled by technology, a novice-sniper seems to be able to make a fairly good shot. On a funnier note, I see it like the autotune technology that helps music artists to fit their out of tune recording to a perfect tune.

Jokes aside, watching this smart bullet change its path mid-air, stirred up the curious cat that lives in my head. I would have had a tough time sleeping without knowing how DARPA’s self-steering bullet actually works. So, armed with free journal access (being a Ph.D. student has its perks), I fired up my google scholar and started looking for white papers with some mention of these keywords. With this technology being developed under DARPA, it’s of course one of those hush-hush things and was sure I won’t find much. Still, I was happy to glean a tiny hint of its inner workings.

Also, I do not intend to get into trouble by revealing too much information. My intention to get to know the basics of what could make something like this work.

The Project
Initially this effort to develop smart ammunition that could adapt in-flight to maneuverer the trajectory was born in May 1995 with the name BLAM (Barrel-Launched Adaptive Munitions). It was mostly an effort to increase accuracy and the range of big sized medium-range air to air rounds fired from aircraft guns which had very bad hit rate. The conclusion of BLAM program evolved into a REAM (Range-Extended Adaptive Munition) program from 1997 to 1998. It focussed on developing the same ability for a much smaller sized 0.50 calibre ammo. This concluded with great results and the efforts continued with a $22 million project – EXACTO (Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance) in 2007.

The end result we see in the video has been a cumulative result of years of science and technology. The specific part of this extended effort which resulted in a technology that could help relatively smaller sniper sized bullets to steer got completed back in Feb 2015. I wonder how the effort must have progressed since then.