No? It’s okay, I couldn’t find him either. I tried really hard too but I’d just be a walking dead person by now if I stumbled across this field in real life because the sniper that’s hiding would have no problem mowing me down. He’s super close. No, not there. There.
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In the old days, when you wanted to double-tap a bad guy with an AR-15, you had to rely on plain-jane scopes or sights… booooring. Good thing we live in a more tactically technological time, the age of the Inteliscope — a mount and app combo that lets you slap an iPhone or iPod touch atop an assault rifle to give the killing fields a little Cupertino flair. Until now, we’d only seen a screenshot of the app, but the company has just released a video of it in action. So, head on down to see for yourself what it’s like swapping reticles, getting range info and recording video of target practice from a sniper’s POV.
Sighting in a target through the scope of a high-caliber rifle can be a bit more complicated then it sounds — snipers have to account for cross-winds, range and a whole host of external factors that could put their projectile off course. It isn’t easy, and the required calculations can seriously slow down a shooter’s time to trigger. The solution? High tech laser-equipped sniper scopes, of course. DARPA has actually been working on this problem for quite some time, and calls its’ project One Shot.
Previous iterations of the targeting system helped shooters increase their chance of hitting their mark by a factor of four, but suffered from short battery life, range finder accuracy errors and overheating problems. DARPA is putting its faith into Cubic Corporation to overcome these faults, awarding the firm with a $6 million contract to develop a “compact observation, measurement and ballistic calculation system” that it calls the One Shot XG. Like its predecessors, the XG is designed to give the shooter a offset aim point to counteract the environmental conditions that would impact bullet trajectory. DARPA is hoping to see ten weapon or scope-mountable field devices within 15 months. Consider this fair warning, Segway bots.
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
DARPA calls on Cubic Corporation to develop frighteningly accurate One Shot XG sniper rifle originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 06:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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