The Army is officially adopting a ‘guaranteed hit’ smart scope

One shot, one kill — every time.

BY JARED KELLER | PUBLISHED OCT 7, 2022 11:20 AM

After years of testing, the Army is officially adopting a specially designed computerized fire control and optic system that will allow troops to lock on to incoming drone threats with their standard-issue rifles and disable them with a single accurate shot.

Israeli company Smart Shooter announced on Friday that it would supply its SMASH 2000L (also known as the SMASH 3000) fire control system to the Army as part of a subcontract from defense contractor Atlantic Diving Supply ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting in Washington D.C. next week...

Complete article with stills and a video about SMASH 3000:

https://taskandpurpose.com/new...ifle-optic-adoption/

Similar article:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-w...shooting-down-drones

Thank you. Very interesting and it will be even more so in the future.

From the Task and Purpose article linked in the OP:

quote:

the round will not release until you have a 100% solution

Prevents wasting ammo, and, yeah, pretty cool...but what if the operator never gets the scope aimed where the scope thinks is a 100% solution? Does that turn into 'zero shots, zero kills' and the enemy drone then does its thing unimpeded?

Must be missing something fundamental here.....

In thinking about this development, I’m reminded of other “guaranteed hit” scope systems that automatically incorporate ballistic calculations with range finding and environmental conditions to adjust the reticle image: put the reticle on the target and “can’t miss.” The problem with the ones like that I’ve seen is that adjusting for wind effects isn’t included, and that’s the most difficult part of long range shooting.

This system is less impressive than it seems at first if, as I understand it, it’s limited to working against stationary targets. A human moving laterally to the shooter’s line of sight at even a relatively slow speed requires a significant lead. If the gun discharges automatically when the gun is aimed directly at a moving target, the bullet will go to where the target was when it was detected, not where the target has moved to by the time the bullet arrives. If that makes hitting a moving human difficult, it would be even more so with a drone that’s smaller and moves faster and often more erratically than a person. Even if the drone is headed directly toward the shooter, the up angle that it must be engaged at continually changes, and increases more rapidly the closer the drone gets.

This system could certainly be very useful in some situations, such as for snipers or marksmen shooting from unstable positions. I must wonder, though, how effective it would be against drones, and especially if their operators adopted simple countermeasures such as moving erratically.

Or am I missing something?

The “Army” might be officially buying this but I highly doubt any troops will actually use this in combat.

Add this to the list of sh$$ that don’t work.

In the video it shows a walking target with the scope providing an aiming solution.

As a Skeet shooter I am very familiar with the requirements for hitting a 108mm disk shaped crossing target moving at 40-70 mph and at 20-30 yards away. It requires a lot more lead than most would expect. Add in the wind bouncing those targets up and down like a bunny rabbit and it gets even more complicated. Hitting a moving target is not nearly as easy as it looks.

So I really do wonder how well this system will work with a target such as a drone flying a pre-programmed shot avoidance pattern. There are small drones out there that can bob and weave nearly as quickly as a top rank Boxer. I suspect that at some point this will end up as a race between programmers, those writing the drone killing software versus those writing the drone kill avoidance software. Which means it could very well as end up as a bottomless hole our government pours our money into.

I suspect that long term the most effective way to kill a drone will be with an EM burst that scrambles its computer or fries the motors.

As a person who has had his truck throw the brakes on due to a crack in the driveway pavement and had GPS try to reroute me around a construction zone that didn't exist, I personally am not fond of technology telling me when I can send a round. It's a cool, really interesting idea and I've seen things that are like it however I'd like to see it just give the info in the display.

These aren't that new are they?
I know they have been out because I saw it on NCIS.
Season 13 Episode 18 to be exact.

It will weight 10 lbs and eat batteries every 3 hrs.

quote:

Originally posted by JoshNC:
It will weight 10 lbs and eat batteries every 3 hrs.

The first one will. The second one will be 5 pounds and the battery will last 2 days, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
As a person who has had his truck throw the brakes on due to a crack in the driveway pavement and had GPS try to reroute me around a construction zone that didn't exist, I personally am not fond of technology telling me when I can send a round. It's a cool, really interesting idea and I've seen things that are like it however I'd like to see it just give the info in the display.

Skynet is trying to eliminate you.

As advancements in Computer Vision & programming Artificial Neural Networks. This will continue to be a space that will evolve over the next few years. Biggest thing will be getting the processing power fit into the scope.

Eventually it could even tell friendlies from bad guys. Auto zoom to a fit a silhouette to a certain size, etc. Computer Vision is a super fascinating space.

quote:

Originally posted by jljones:
Skynet is trying to eliminate you.

Ha! They always are.