FireArm Blog Story:
…The patent describes a LIDAR (Laser Identification Detection And Ranging) unit which works by firing a laser beam at the target. The reflection of the laser is captured by an array of photodiodes. Fluctuations in the signals received by the photodiodes are used to detect both the direction and velocity of cross wind…
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(Burris Eliminator LaserScope. Automatically calculates elevation holdover)
Wired Magazine has some more insight on this amazing product:
Earlier this month, a British Army sniper Corporal Craig Harrison broke the world’s record for superaccurate 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 ultraprecise 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 3-year-old program, shooters used prototype rifles dressed with lasers and fancy computer hardware to do damage from 1,100 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.
The program is just one of several high-tech hardware upgrades the U.S. military is pursuing for its snipers. Plans are also in place to make bullets that can change course in mid-air and a stealth sniper scope that would make shooters all but invisible.
With initial demonstrations complete, the next step for One Shot is to make 15 “field-testable prototype, observation, measurement, and ballistic calculation system[s], which enable [s]nipers to hit targets with the first round, under crosswind conditions, up to the maximum effective range,” Darpa says in its program announcement. Total cost: $7 million….
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