Watch DARPA's smart EXACTO bullets change path mid flight

By Matthew Griffin Security and Privacy 8th July 2019

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Bullets haven’t evolved in many years, but now DARPA’s smart bullets could turn everyone into a professional sniper.

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DARPA’s self-steering bullet, which first appeared in 2015 as you can see in the video below, is, if acronyms are enough to go by, supposed to have “razor-fine precision.” Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance, or EXACTO, is a bullet that chases its target, adjusting course mid-flight to make sure it hits exactly what or who it is supposed to hit. And recently DARPA tested their latest version of their new bullet against moving targets, and pounded them all.

The video of DARPA’s early tests look like an obscure video game from the 1980s where players trace out a path to a robot which then runs away. Tracked on screen are the projected path of the bullet, and then the actual flight path EXACTO takes, and you can see it bending and turning its trajectory to follow a sideways-sprinting target, which is no mean feat.

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Over several shots, EXACTO improves the accuracy of both expert and novice snipers sending .50 caliber doom to its mark each and every time.

Watch EXACTO in action

For now EXACTO is specifically designed for combat in places like rural patrols in Afghanistan, where fighting is at long range and the weather can interfere with snipers’ accuracy. It is, as the name hints, a weapon specifically for edge cases which is what most snipers do, and this won’t change, but in the instances where having a self-correcting bullet could matter DARPA wants to make sure that the US military has a weapon that can do what its opponents can’t.

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Little information about EXACTO is publicly available, but despite fears to the contrary by military experts it’s unlikely we’ll see the technology escape into the wild and appear on American streets any time soon, if only because of its cost.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.