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New rifles with explosive rounds can be told where to detonate By Dan Smith Posted 06.05.2009 at 5:09 pm Smart Rifle: You won't see the rifle or the bullet until it's too late It would be hard to describe a bullet as smart, but what if that bullet was laser-guided, radio-controlled, and carried an onboard targeting CPU? The US Army has announced the creation of the XM25 rifle, which can fire a new type of explosive round that fit that exact description. Imagine the implications: hitting targets inside buildings or hiding around walls. Whoa. First, the scope on the rifle has a laser that gauges the distance to the target. The soldier can set exactly where the 25-millimeter bullet will detonate by adding or subtracting 3 meters from that point. Then, the scope will send a radio signal to a chip inside the bullet telling it how far it should travel before exploding. Now, here's where things get truly nuts: Each bullet has a small magnetic transducer that inte...

Pirates in Somalia are at it again. Over the weekend they claimed their biggest prize to date: a Saudi oil tanker the size of three football fields, laden with $100 million in crude oil. Before you summon romantic images of rum-soaked swashbucklers gallivanting "Pirates of the Caribbean"-style, consider this: The sophistication of the most recent attack has the attention of U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Monday Mullen said he's "stunned" at the pirates' ability to hijack a vessel in the open ocean so far from the coast (though most attacks occur closer to the Gulf of Aden, this one took place 450 miles off the coast of Kenya). "[The pirates are] very well armed. Tactically, they are very good," Mullen said. Indeed, the seizure of the Saudi tanker is the latest in a series of high-stakes incidents in recent months. Piracy has long plagued the waters off the Horn of Africa, but attacks this year have spiked 75 p...