What’s that ghostly trail in the air? A bullet, flying and turning on its way to nail a target nearly 2km away. This is science fiction — four inches long and launched from the barrel of a gun.
The guided bullet was cooked up at Sandia National Laboratories, a joint weapons toyshop between the Department of Energy and Lockheed Martin. Somewhere in there, bright minds have produced this projectile, which self-corrects its trajectory 30 times every second to wind its way over 2000m to a laser-pinpointed target, missile-style. Wind? Weather? The rotation of the earth? Those shouldn’t be a problem for the bullet’s tiny fins, which are fed navigational data by an onboard sensor.
Of course, laser-guided missiles miss their mark too, but a failed shot from a gun should carry a lot less of a risk than that of a missile. Sadly, if the bullet is ever deployed in combat (and not a test range), it won’t carry that eery trail — that’s just an onboard LED to prove the thing’s dexterity. Which is a shame! What’s more terrifying than a bullet that flies itself? A glowing bullet.
[Sandia via Danger Room]