What is a smart bullet? A smart bullet is a projectile that is able to alter its trajectory after it has been fired.
Smart bullets sound scary, but they could have benefits. A lot of deaths in warfare come from collateral damage. There are accidental shootings by the police as well. Smart bullets would be able to accurately hit the intended target, keeping those around safe. A smart bullet could also hit a target in cases where it wouldn’t be safe for a human to take a shot. They can also be used to hit moving targets, a shot that would be difficult for a human to judge.
The very first guns were loaded with a ball that was rammed down the barrel and sat atop the explosive. The bullets were loose in the barrel and when it was fired, the ball bounced off the sides of the barrel and then there was no real way of knowing where it would go. Air resistance and the wind could spin it in any direction and probably the safest place for the enemy to be was directly in front of the gun. In the 1830s, a French infantry captain came up with the idea of shaping bullets to make them more aerodynamic. It improved them, but there was still no way of aiming perfectly. Things really improved with rifling. This is where spiral grooves are cut into the inside of the gun barrel. They give the bullet horizontal rotation as it comes out of the barrel, which makes it cut through the air more accurately. Rifling has been around since the 16th century, but it had to be engraved by hand and was difficult and expensive. It only became common with the precision machinery of the 19th century. Modern guns are fairly accurate at short distances, but the father the distance, the less accurate they are. If you are making a long distance shot of say 2 km, you need to account for wind, heat, the curvature of the Earth, and a host of other things. The only way to make the bullet more accurate is to increase the velocity because the faster the bullet travels, the less chance that it will be affected by the conditions. However, other than having a high powered rifle and a very talented sniper, there is no guarantee of making a shot at a long distance. Smart bullets can change all of that.
There are several different types of smart bullets already available, but the details behind the most technologically advanced ones are not public knowledge. The ones that we can find out about were invented in about 2010, so it goes without saying that modern smart bullets have far more capabilities than the ones that I have found. The USA, Russia, and China appear to have the most advanced technology at the moment. Let’s look at two kinds of smart bullets.
The first kind are able to adjust their trajectory after they have been fired from the gun. There are a few ways of doing this and I’m sure modern smart bullets have even more ways. A missile that has been fired can use its stored fuel to fire rockets and alter its trajectory, but you cannot pack fuel into a bullet because it will make it too heavy. One possible way of doing this is to have fins on the bullet and a very light motor that can angle them. The fins can be deployed after the bullet has been fired, so that they don’t get in the way through the barrel. Then the small motors can angle the fins to move the bullet as it flies. Another kind of smart bullet is made of metal and a flexible plastic. A small motor inside the bullet can pull on different sides of bullet to deform the flexible plastic, altering the bullets shape and the direction it flies in. The bullet will contain a mini gyroscope and accelerometer, similar to what is in your phone, so that it always knows where it is. The most basic form of smart bullet will follow a laser guide to the target. The sniper will keep a laser on the target and the smart bullet has three cameras. It is programmed to keep an equal amount of laser in each camera. If it can see more laser in two of them, it knows which way to move. These bullets are able to adjust their course over 30 times a second, which is necessary because of the speed that bullets travel at.
There are also bullets with a camera that can lock on to a target and track its movements. I have no evidence for this, but I expect that modern bullets use some form of processor, possibly even AI, to analyze a target and make decisions in fight.
Some smart bullets are full of sensors. They can direct themselves in the same way as other smart bullets, but they have cameras and sensors rather than explosives. They can be used to send information back to base, or to other smart bullets that are already in flight. Similar to tracer rounds, but far more effective.
This is the information that is available to the public. There is no way of knowing what actually exists. And this is what I learned today.
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Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_bullet
https://www.darpa.mil/news/2015/exacto-guided-bullet-demonstration
https://www.slashgear.com/1276635/smart-bullets-explained
https://shop.otmtactical.com/The-History-of-Ammunition-The-First-Bullet.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifling
Photo by Kony Xyzx: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-soldier-sniper-aiming-though-the-rifle-scope-in-forest-3706647/