Army Searching for a New Rifle to Help Soldiers Shoot Straight

WASHINGTON —  The Army has begun research to determine if modern technology can help soldiers shoot straight when under enemy fire.

Looking ahead to the 1990s, the Army is asking manufacturers to help develop a rifle that would actually compensate for the poor marksmanship that soldiers display under the stress of battle.

While the Army already has some ideas on how it might work, it says it is open to suggestions.

The goal, the service adds in a statement, is a rifle that will help soldiers overcome “stress-induced aiming errors so that the probabilities of hit and incapacitation are significantly increased.”

The Army’s standard infantry rifle for the last two decades has been the M-16. The latest version of the M-16 can be fired in a semi-automatic mode, meaning each pull of the trigger produces one shot, or in a burst mode, meaning each pull of the trigger produces three shots.

Although the M-16 has been repeatedly refined and is considered an excellent weapon, its accuracy depends on the man firing it.

An Army paper on the project notes: “The soldier’s performance with current rifles . . . is reduced by the stress of combat. Under situations where life-threatening targets are exposed for short times, are sometimes moving and are at unknown ranges, the soldier’s aiming errors are large.”

To solve that, engineers have come up with the idea of firing multiple rounds out of a rifle barrel in “a controlled dispersion pattern that can be used to compensate for large aiming errors.”

“The idea is that with one pull of the trigger, there would be several shots, and the muzzle of the rifle would automatically make each shot jump around to form a pattern,” said Lt. Col. Craig MacNab, an Army public affairs officer. “In essence, the muzzle would purposely and automatically disperse the shots in a tight pattern.”