The bullet turns itself like a missile

The manner in which soldiers and police fight will change in the future after the ammunition has the ability to adjust itself to its direction, American engineers say.

AP's engineers at Sandia National Laboratory are designing bullets capable of shifting 30 times per second to target the laser beam.

The bullet, which is about 10 cm long, is attached with an optical sensor at the tip to detect the laser on the target. The optical sensor sends information about the location of the target to the electronic circuits. Electronic circuits use an algorithm to control the electromagnetic actuators. When the actuators are activated, they control the tiny flakes to bring the bullet to the target.

The lab has received more than a million dollars to research and develop new ammunition. The design and manufacturing process has taken place in the past three years.

Red Jones, a technical expert at the Sandia National Laboratory, says he and his colleagues are designing 50 self-propelled bullets for machine guns. The biggest challenge is that electronic circuits, electromagnetic actuators and scales must be small enough to be integrated into the bullet. The team tested the operation of the ammunition on the computer model. They also made the first bullet version and tried it in the field.

As the most complex steps have been taken, Sandia National Laboratory's next work is to work with a company to produce self-propelled ammunition and bring them to market.

In the first tests, self-guided ammunition hit a maximum speed of more than 720m / s. The research team believes that the bullets could reach the standard speeds of the US military with conventional explosives.

Computer simulations show that if the target is more than 800 meters from the target, normal ammunition can drop to near 9m. At similar distances, self-guided ammunition deviates less than 20cm.