Weapons

How to build cheaper smart weapons

A new generation of cut-price precision munitions could change the way America’s army wages war, for despite being the world’s most technologically advanced and generously funded force, it still employs a great deal of cheap, dumb, unguided weapons.

The idea is to link an individual smart munition with a flock of dumber, cheaper companions. The smart round uses its sophisticated sensors to find targets, and passes data to its less able comrades. The smart weapon handles all of the tricky navigation and target identification; its companions just have to work out where they are in relation to their master, and then go where they are told. Data are passed between them in brief radio chirps.

Dr Fresconi is not making a specific missile. Rather, he and his team are developing the electronic building blocks needed to assemble a wide range of different weapons. The results might be fired from a mortar, from a cannon, from a rocket launcher mounted on a lorry, or from the sort of weapon an individual solider might carry. In each case, a shell or rocket would release a swarm of submunitions.