DARPA Awards Lockheed Martin $3.9m Contract to Develop Advanced Rifle Scope for Soldiers

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DInGO automatically calculates the range with a low power laser rangefinder, digitally zooms in on it and accounts for environmental conditions such as wind using sensors built into the scope. It then projects the bullet's point-of-impact calculated from the embedded ballistics computer.

The new sight is based on Lockheed Martin's 'One Shot' Advanced Sighting System, which utilizes similar precision engagement technology to automatically transmit crosswind information to a long-range sniper's scope and modify the crosshairs to display exactly where the bullet will strike.
"Current scopes are optimized for a single target range, impacting soldiers' effectiveness and survivability when engaging targets at different distances during a single mission," said Dan Schultz, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems & Sensors Ship & Aviation Systems business. "DInGO will solve this problem, significantly increasing soldiers' ability to rapidly reconfigure optics for use from short to long ranges and improving marksmanship capabilities for all soldiers."

Lockheed Marting is conducting the current development under a nine-month DARPA contract worth about $4 million. in 2008 DARPA awarded Lockheed Martin an 18-month, $9.7 million contract, to integrate One Shot's new crosswind measurement technology into a prototype spotter scope - a small telescope that is carried by sniper teams and is used to bring far-away objects into close view. During tactical field tests in December 2009, snipers were able to engage targets twice as quickly and increase their probability of a first-round hit by a factor of two using the One Shot technology at distances beyond 1,000 meters.

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