The dream of any army is to have a bullet that will home in on the opponent even from afar or when changing positions. The US Army has been on the lookout for this one and Sandia National Laborities has obliged with the development of this. Definitely this will revolutionize warfare as it will keep armies at bay when confronted by an opposing army armed with self-guided bullets.

The prototype has already been tested up to 2,000 meters, with the photo below showing its trajectory when it was fired. The "tracer" light seen is an LED that was attached to the bullet so that it can be tracked by the camera and it hypothetically it could get to around 8" of the target at its maximum range. That's very close enough, and snipers would love to have this as their main ammo.

So how this self-guided bullet work? This 4-inch long .50 caliber bullet is packed with an optical sensor, CPU, actuator and an battery. When a laser is shone on a target the bullet then is steered by the actuators with the fins that change the direction of the bullet as the target changes in movement and distance. With the technology packed into it, it can make corrections in trajectory at 30 times a second.

I don't know how much this would cost to produce and Sandia Labs is looking for a partner to put this into production. If this does get into production, it will be initially made to work with machine guns as they have larger calibers and if indeed it does work the swarms of soldiers trying to overrun positions maybe a thing of the past as machine gunners with self-guided bullets would be able to fire accurately at high rates of fire, conserving ammo, and almost making each shot count.

Unless you're Neo or Trinity of the Matrix, trying to dodge bullets would be harder in the near future. If you're thinking of a self-guided BB for airsoft, forget it, the shape of the plastic BB and the costs of production would make it impossible.

News video about the self guided bullet from KOMO News below: