Being a sniper might be the position that most gamers go for in a FPS (if there is a sniper class weapon available, of course), but in the real world, those who want to graduate as snipers would have to be extraordinary marksman right from the start, with very little room for mistakes. After all, when each shot that you take has a high chance of revealing your position, and if you miss, your target might have enough time to scamper away for protection or shelter before you are able to finish reloading. This means from afar, snipers will need to draw on their experience and rely on their skill to compensate for crosswinds and the inescapable fact that bullets travel in a curved trajectory, not to mention having to deal with barrel disruptions that might just cause you to literally miss by a mile.
A new kind of rifle sighting system developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) might just help snipers shoot better by removing one of the variables out of the equation. This is a fiber-optic laser-based sensor system that is capable of precisely measuring the deflection of the barrel relative to the sight, while adjusting the crosshairs automatically to match the true position of the barrel.
ORNL technology sees glass optical fibers being placed into the exterior grooves, which will reduce weight and create added surface area to enable the gun’s barrel to cool down faster. These flutes are even able to be retrofitted to existing barrels, now how about that? A laser diode will send a signal beam into the optical fibers, where it will split the beam twice, sending one of the light beams along the top of the rifle barrel with the other along the side, resulting in the system measuring both the vertical and horizontal barrel deflection. Interesting – time to do a more thorough sniper sweep of an area if this tech goes mainstream soon!
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