New Technology of Bullets and Gun

choi

The future of sniping | Enemy at the Gates; New technology is improving military sharpshooters’ range and accuracy. Economist, Nov 21, 2015.
http://www.economist.com/news/sc ... -and-accuracy-enemy

Note:
(a) "Nor are sniper bullets merely anti-personnel weapons. At the moment, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a think-tank in Virginia, one of the best of them is the Raufoss MK211, made by Nammo, a Norwegian firm. This can penetrate 15mm of steel at a range of more than 500 metres, even when fired at an oblique angle of as little as 30° to the target. Moreover, once it has penetrated, a fuse sets off both an explosive charge (to spray shrapnel) and an incendiary one (to ignite any leaking fuel). According to Vegard Sande, one of Nammo’s engineers, a single MK211 shot can destroy a helicopter."
(i) Raufoss MK211
(A) Raufoss MK211
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raufoss_Mk_211
(.50 caliber (12.7×99mm NATO); anti-matériel: the projectile having an armor-piercing (tungsten core), an explosive, and an incendiary component)

Quote: "Raufoss, which refers to Nammo's original parent company: Raufoss Ammunisjonsfabrikk (Ammunition Factory) in Raufoss, Norway, established in 1896. The "Mk 211" name comes from the nomenclature 'Mk 211 Mod 0' used by the US military for this round.

(ii) Nammo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nammo
(short for Nordic AMMunition Company: Norwegian/Finnish: owned 50/50 by the Norwegian Government (represented by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries) and the Finnish defence company Patria; headquarters in Norway)

(b) "a sniper almost always relies on a spotter to feed him information about a target’s location. He may also need assistance in dealing with the long list of things that could cause him to miss—from crosswinds to the rotation of the Earth. Coping with them can require complex mathematical calculations."

(c) “Sandia National Laboratories * * * new bullet, which has not yet been given a name, is fired from a smoothbore barrel. But its resemblance to a musket ball ends there. Rather, it is a pointed projectile with fins, actuators that can change the trim of those fins, an on-board computer to control the actuators, an optical sensor in its tip that tells the computer where the target is, and a lithium battery to power the lot. To protect the fins it is cradled for firing in structures called sabots. These fall off once the bullet has left the barrel.”
(i) I fail to find a photo or anime of such a bullet.
(ii) With primary campus in Albuquerque, New Mexico (the other in Livermore, California), Sandia National Laboratories were named after the nearby Sandia Mountains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandia_Mountains
(Sandía means watermelon in Spanish, and is popularly believed to be a reference to the reddish color of the mountains at sunset)

The English pronunciation of Sandia in Sandia Labs has the accent placed on "i" -- the same as in Spanish (that is what the mark above the letter "i" om Spanish is for.)
(iii)
(A) sabot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabot
(B) sabot (n; etymology)
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sabot
(an illustration of wooden shoe/ clog)

(d) A second dodging-and-weaving bullet, EXACTO * * * by DARPA * * * Unlike the Sandia bullet, EXACTO is spin-stabilised and can thus be fired from a standard 12.7mm rifle.  How such a finless projectile is steered is one of DARPA’s secrets. Another is how it is told where to go. Unlike the Sandia bullet, EXACTO relies on a signal coming from its controllers rather than a reflection from the target. Spin-generated air turbulence would be expected to interfere with this. In the case of EXACTO, though, it doesn’t. DARPA’s engineers have also * * * managed to harden the electronics involved to withstand the centrifugal force imparted by the spin, as well as the force of the initial acceleration.

Exacto Guided Bullet Demonstrates Repeatable Performance Against Moving Targets. Darpa, Apr 27, 2015 (video).
www.darpa.mil/news-events/2015-04-27

(e) “A third type of smart round, which is guided in another way again from the Sandia bullet and EXACTO, is the XM25, developed by Alliant Techsystems, a weapons company that is now part of OrbitalATK. This is designed for times when a sniper does not have a clear line of sight to his target—if the man is dug in, for example. It is spin-stabilised, and its internal computer counts the number of revolutions it has made. That tells it how far it has travelled. When it is directly over the target it explodes, scattering shrapnel. It has already been combat-tested in Afghanistan”

XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE). Orbital ATK, undated.
https://www.orbitalatk.com/defense-systems/armament-systems/cdte/
(i)  enfilade and defilade
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enfilade_and_defilade

Note pronunciations:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/defilade
(ii) ATK stands for Alliant Techsystems. Where does the K comes from?  I do not know.

(f) “Nor is making bullets smart the only way to increase accuracy. Making guns smart works too. This is the approach taken by TrackingPoint, a [Austin, ]Texan firm. Its system collects and crunches almost all the variables (distance to target; air temperature and pressure; compass bearing, to allow for the Earth’s spin; and even the size of the area on the target that will produce a kill) which might cause a dumb round to miss. The sniper has only to add wind speed and direction, and then pull the trigger. The gun waits until its calculations suggest all is well before firing the bullet. * * * sooner or later, the [TrackingPoint] secret will out.”

That is why currently the company website discloses nothing (and I can find nothing in the Web). See How It Works. TrackingPoint, undated. See
tracking-point.com/how-it-works