An unmanned aerial vehicle sniper system. Sagetech has a design/whitepaper on the topic available.
Highlights:
The TAPSS system is much more accurate than a traditional human sniper team for both the first and second shots fired, as shown in Figure 2 for a range of 1500m. A traditional sniper weapon’s maximum range is typically limited to 600-800 m. Kills have been recorded at longer ranges than this, but it is typically considered to be a “lucky shot”. The TAPSS automated firing system pushes the useful range of the sniper weapon out to 1500 m.
Each 50- caliber ammunition round will likely cost from $4 to $8, as opposed to a cost of $60,000 for each AGM-114 Hellfire missile. UAV sniper will also have a relatively large number of stowed kills; about 100 50-caliber rounds versus 2-4 Hellfire missiles for other UCAVs.
This direction of development is inevitable (towards what I am calling "cloud airpower"). Only the pace of advance and the sponsor (Air Force or Army) is in question. We can also expect variants of this on the DIY weapons front as well.
Think forward towards a cloud level saturation of an urban environment. Moore's law rolls forward. Vehicle size shrinks. Vehicle intelligence zooms. Numbers per $ goes exponential. $.0000001 nano-sensors and nano-tags delivered in billion unit blankets, all radiating information. The Cloud's larger vehicles coordinating activity via stigmergic communications. Hunter-killers sifting through that data to find targets, leaving a trail for others to follow in their wake.
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