Earlier this month, a British Army sniper Corporal Craig Harrison broke the world’s record for super-accurate shooting, taking out a pair of Taliban machine gunners from a mile-and-a-half away. It was a one-in-a-million feat — one performed under “perfect” conditions, Harrison says: “no wind, mild weather, clear visibility.”
Darpa, the Pentagon’s way-out research arm, is hoping to use lasers and advanced optical systems to make other snipers Harrison-accurate, even when the winds are howling. The agency is looking for 15 ultra-precise sniper scopes to put in shooters’ hands by next year.
The “One Shot” program originally aimed to give snipers the power to hit a target from 2000 meters away in winds as high as 40 miles per hour. In the first phases of the three year-old program, shooters used prototype rifles dressed with lasers and fancy computer hardware to do damage from 1100 meters away in 18 mile-an-hour winds. The scope-mounted lasers can “see” wind turbulence in the path of the bullet and feed the data to computers, enabling real-time calculation of – and compensation for – the wind-blown trajectory.
Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/darpa-wants-super-sniper-rifles-in-shooters-hands-by-2011/#ixzz0oy3NEPY4
