General News U.S. Develops Self-Guiding Bullets

This will take all the sport out of hunting

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Wasn't this a scene from The Fifth Element?

 

Well, the poor soldiers might be embarrased if they miss! Naturally, this will be really good for their honor, so this is very good. Yes... very good...

 

Stormtroopers will like this news

 

I'm only curious if it's possible to make puns with bullets.

 

Yeah, I read that yesterday. All I could think was "Titanfall called it."

 

Bullet me ask you a question, are you ready for it?

O god, that's bad. But Im aiming to make another better

 

This is horrible if you ask me. But I think war in general is almost inconceivably crazy, and can't imagine how anyone can intentionally murder another human being for the location they're born in, or the color of their skin or whatever. Just cold murder. How they manage to get hundreds of thousands of people to become so blood thirsty they can't wait to commit mass murder is beyond my comprehension. Even if I had to do it in direct self-defense it's not something I would ever get over. Just knowing I took some mother's child from her would eat me up inside.

I like how at the end of the video they say these bullets are going to save American lives, but they forgot to mention they are saving American lives at the expense of other human lives. I've never understood how that is something to be celebrated? Since when does the location you're born in make your life more valuable?

So yeah, I'm a pacifist, in case anyone was still wondering.

 

That does trigger a chuckle.

 

But seriously speaking, if this technology would be 100% working and non faulty, this would lessen the victims of stray bullets. The number one reason of death of civilians in war is stray bullets.

 

War is shitty, yeah, but unavoidable. There will always be people that are big enough assholes to start war and if good people are not ready to meet them, we might as well give them all we have right now.

And honestly, I think these new smart bullets are a step in the right direction. Because war isn't about killing the other guys, it's about doing enough damage to make the other guys call it quits. This isn't done best by simply killing, but through shock and awe campaigns and wounding enemy soldiers without killing them. If you send Little Timmy home without a leg instead of killing him, Little Timmy's mother and father will have to take care of him and they'll start seeing this war ain't so great and then tell all their friends. Eventually the populace loses morale and the leaders can no longer justify a war. There are very few exceptions to that rule. One example of one such exception was Japan in World War II, they just didn't quit. That's when shock and awe comes in, when you show the enemy that they are so without hope of winning that they just go home.

How does this relate to smart bullets? Well, if their tracking is good enough, you can program them to incapacitate rather than kill--send the soldiers home wounded instead of in a casket. Additionally, you've got the shock and awe component. Imagine an entire platoon being incapacitated by a single guy with a very quick trigger finger. Why even try? If the bullets can be perfected so that it resembles the Smart Pistol from Titanfall, which I think it can, it could do a lot of these things.

Also, imagine a worst case scenario where your country becomes full on invaded and even occupied like France in World War II. Imagine if you could hand out guns to the resistance that makes them as potent as a trained marksman without having to go through any military training. You can literally turn your entire population into a trained army by putting an object in their hand.

 

Yeah, that's true. It's a bit difficult imagining how it would play out. These guns would essentially be computers, so I imagine it'd be possible to program them to only work with some people or destroy themselves when its wielder dies. In any case, I think cyber warfare would have to become much more integrated into war.

 

Don't matter what you do, the Yanks will still manage to mow down entire villages by mistake while yelling "take that you god damn A-rab!"

How will they be controlled? Does it mean an ISIS teenager on his laptop can get an entire battalion's bullets to turn back and take them out?

 

I agree with you Lazuri, that if these were used for only incapacitating people it would be a step in the right direction. It would still be absolutely horrible and barbaric, but slightly less so. I don't think there is a "bad guy" at all. Who is the bad guy? US soldiers have murdered far more people than anybody else. I guess that makes them the bad guys?

That would be a good outcome, if no one wanted to shoot people in the first place, even if it is out of fear rather than compassion. I still don't understand the need for war in the first place, but that's probably why people call me naïve. I just believe we could all get along if we could all just compromise a bit. No one would have to die, or live without limbs or any other horrible thing. We should focus on growing as a species, to understand the world we live in, we don't have any need for borders or anything to do that.

We could all just get along. People could practice the religion they believe is right, admit that they may be wrong, but feel content that they feel it's what's right. We could see the beauty in difference, and how without differences we would all just be the same, and never evolve. We could spend the resources now spent on war, on making the world a better place for everyone, no matter where on the glove you were born. I don't see why anyone would not love this? Why can't we just all admit we have no idea what we're doing on this planet, what life itself is, whether it even exists or what the meaning is? We could try to figure it out together, like a civilized species. What is wrong with that picture? I can't see what would be worse about that situation than our current one. Guess I'm just a hippie. :/

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ETA:

I think you're way overestimating the capabilities of this bullet. They said they have a sensor at the tip, which would probably mean they look for a heat signature. There is no way they could put real-time detection of a target at that speed into a single bullet, not without each bullet costing tens of thousands of dollars each. This will also not eliminate stray bullets hitting civilians, because these will most likely only be used for snipers.

I may be a hippie, but I've got my geeky side. :lol:

 

Quite simply put? Peace is far from as profitable as war and there's nothing men in power love more than profit and their own well-being. It's just pure Darwinism when it comes down to it. Nothing in nature wants to further itself as a species, they just want to further themselves and their own.

With current technology, you're right. Not sure they'll stop here, though. The way I imagine this heading, you'd eventually have guns that act as a computer and this computerized gun programs each bullet individually before it is fired. It'd be expensive today, but everything always ends up cheaper eventually. Still, I'd imagine the gun to only be used by special operatives rather than every grunt on the field.

It's also quite possible that they'll just abandon this as they have done so many other projects. They were at one point working on a suit that was similar to the Crysis Nanosuit--it didn't cloak and shit, but it was very protective and had a built in HUD-- but they abandoned it. The railgun is another example. I saw a bunch of demos on it years ago, but I haven't heard anything since. It was working too, it fired projectiles so fast that it converted air to plasma when it went through the air.

 

That's where me being a naïve hippy comes in. :lol: I don't understand what makes power more attractive to people than the well-being of all of humanity.

It seems DARPA loves to develop new technologies and never put them to use. :lol: I wonder how much money they throw away coming up with all these things. At least they're having fun. I would love a job where I get to come up with new awesome things, and ditch them when I get bored. That would be perfect for me, although I don't think they'd like the things I come up with. They wouldn't necessarily be useful in war.

 

This is not going to end well.

 

Good news...