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The .50 Browning Machine Gun is a .50 in (12.7 mm) caliber cartridge developed for the M2 Browning heavy machine gun in the late 1910s, entering official service in 1921. Under STANAG 4383, it is a standard service cartridge for NATO forces as well as many non-NATO countries. The cartridge itself has been made in many variants: multiple generations of regular ball, tracer, armor-piercing (AP), incendiary, and saboted sub-caliber rounds. The rounds intended for machine guns are made into a continuous belt using metallic links.
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The M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle (ESR), formerly known as the XM2010 and M24 Reconfigured Sniper Weapon System, is a sniper rifle developed by PEO Soldier for the United States Army. It is derived from and replaced the M24 Sniper Weapon System, and was designed to give snipers longer range in the mountainous and desert terrain of the War in Afghanistan. After winning a competitive bidding process, Remington was awarded the production contract for up to 3,600 weapons. The Army had anticipated sending the upgraded weapons to deployed snipers in late 2010, but later expected fielding would happen in January 2011. The M2010 fires .300 Winchester Magnum (7.62×67mm) ammunition, which offers about 50 percent more effective range than the M24's 7.62×51mm NATO. This chambering to dimensionally larger cartridges is possible because the M24 was designed to use the "long action" bolt version of the Remington 700 receiver for cartridges up to 3.34 inches (84.84 mm) in overall length.
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TrackingPoint is an applied technology company based in Austin, Texas. In 2011, it created a long-range rifle system that was the first precision guided firearm.
Precision guided firearms (PGFs) are long-range rifle systems designed to improve the accuracy of shooting at targets at extended ranges through target tracking, heads-up display, and advanced fire control. Inspired by missile lock-on and fighter jet technology, the application of PGF technology to small arms mitigates multiple sources of marksman error including mis-aim, trigger jerk and shot setup miscalculation. PGFs can significantly increase first shot success probability (FSSP) out to extreme ranges of 1,100 meters or more.
The SCORPION(Self CORrecting Projectile for Infantry OperatioN) program was a research initiative funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and led by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Georgia Institute of Technology to integrate micro adaptive flow control (MAFC) technology into small caliber munitions to develop spinning, guided projectiles. The program led to the creation of a spin-stabilized 40 mm grenade, also called SCORPION, that could propel itself to its target by using calculated micro-jet bursts of air to correct its path once launched.
References
- ↑ https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-04-27 [ bare URL ]
- ↑ Thompson, Mark (15 April 2009), "Pirates Beware: Soon Rifles That Kill from a Mile Away", Time , archived from the original on 17 April 2009
- ↑ "DARPA Developing Optically-Guided Bullet System (Video)" Archived 10 September 2016 at the Wayback Machine . Guns.com, 26 July 2012
- ↑ Lavars, Nick. "DARPA's guided sniper bullet changes path mid-flight" GizMag, 15 July 2014. Accessed: 19 July 2014.
- ↑ "EXACTO Demonstrates First-Ever Guided .50-Caliber Bullets Archived 2015-02-08 at the Wayback Machine " DARPA, 10 July 2014. Accessed: 19 July 2014.
- ↑ "DoD Wants Bullet That Can Change Direction After Being Fired". Military.com, 15 December 2014
- ↑ EXACTO Guided bullet demonstrates repeatable performance against moving targets - Armyrecognition.com, 29 April 2015
- ↑ Russians Launch Smart Bullet Effort in the Wake of U.S. Program - Kitup.Military.com, 20 July 2016
- ↑ "Russia launches 'smart bullet' testing in guided flight regime".