clipped from: www.time.com   

Pirates Beware: Soon Rifles That Kill from a Mile Away



A sniper team trains with .50 caliber rifle

The three Navy SEAL snipers who killed the pirates off the coast of Somalia last weekend were lucky the buccaneers were gullible enough to allow their lifeboat to be towed farther out to sea by the U.S.S. Bainbridge. The shortened towline turned what could have been a trio of difficult shots across hundreds of yards of ocean into relatively easy 30-yd. pops. It's a safe bet future pirates won't be so naive. But the Pentagon is drawing up a project to make it easier to hit targets at much longer distances: a super-sniper rifle called the EXACTO, short for EXtreme ACcuracy Tasked Ordnance.


DARPA says the Pentagon needs the vastly improved rifle because the use of snipers has ballooned from 250 to 800 annually.

See pictures of modern-day pirates.