DARPA successfully test fires a .50 caliber guided sniper round. Could EXACTO rounds become the defacto standard for all ground-based munitions?
Long range sniping has been a part of the military arsenal since at least the 1770s. While previous generations of sharpshooters have had to balance precision marksmanship with an understanding of their environment, a new generation of snipers might be able to take a shot while throwing caution to the wind.
In a video recently published by DARPA, the military’s advanced technology incubator demonstrated that specially designed bullets now have the ability to hit targets that are “offset from where [a] sniper rifle is aimed.”
Called Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance (EXACTO), the advanced ballistic is designed to minimize the time its takes to engage high-value targets, as well as protect troops by reducing the number of muzzle bursts that could give away their position. The EXACTO also offers snipers the ability to fire from greater distances and extends the day and nighttime envelope for “current state-of-the-art sniper systems.”
Given the amazing potential of this new munition DARPA’s engineers are fairly tight lipped about EXACTO’s make-up. However, the agency will likely conduct additional tests to evaluate the technology’s performance in further ground-based munitions.
Armed with EXACTO technology I wouldn’t be surprised to see heavy artillery, mortars and similar environmentally affected weapons systems adopt more advanced or well-adapted iterations of these guided bullets.
Image and Video Courtesy of DARPA
