Snipers
Darpa's Exacto bullets could make snipers even more accurate. Reuters

Remember that movie "Wanted,” the one starring Angelina Jolie as an assassin that involved curving bullets' trajectories to kill their targets? We're not sure if the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency watched it, but they have been hard at work developing a self-guided bullet. It's not quite the flick of the wrist James McAvoy uses in the film, but the agency uses an in-flight optical guidance system that adjusts the course of the bullet to increase accuracy.

In live-fire tests of the Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (Exacto) system .50-caliber bullet, expert snipers trained with the system were able to hit a moving target with relative ease. Novice snipers also had their accuracy improved using the Exacto bullet. The bullets adjust to wind and weather conditions as well as the movement of the target. Even a first-time shooter was incredibly accurate using the self-guided bullet.

"This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that Exacto is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting Exacto’s guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers," Jerome Dunn, Darpa program manager, said in a statement.

Darpa's Exacto project was designed to improve the range and accuracy of sniper weapon systems, and the bullets could increase the safety for the military involved in a standoff. Darpa's Tactical Technology Office has been developing the Exacto program and is also responsible for anti-submarine warfare programs using unmanned vessels and the Airborne Launch Assist Space Access (Alasa) program that could launch satellites within 24 hours.

Video of the live-fire test can be viewed below.