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Point-and-Shoot: TrackingPoint's New Linux-Controlled AR-15s
Ars Technica takes a look at the next generation of TrackingPoint's automatically aimed rifles (not "automatic" in the usual sense), and visited the shooting range where they're tested out. Like the company's previous generation of gun (still in production, and increasingly being sold to government buyers), TrackingPoint's offerings integrate a Linux computer that makes acquiring and tracking a target far easier and more accurate than it would otherwise be. Unlike the older models, though, this year TrackingPoint is concentrating on AR-15s, rather than longer, heavier bolt-action rifles. A slice:
The signature "Tag-Track-Xact" system has gained additional functionality on the AR models, too. With the bolt-action guns, there was only one way to put a round onto a target: first, you sighted in on the thing you wanted to hit and depressed the red tagging button just above the trigger. A red pip would appear in the scope’s crosshairs, and you’d place the pip onto the target and release the button. The scope’s rangefinding laser would then illuminate the target to measure its distance, and the image processor would fix on the object; if you moved, or if the target moved, the red pip would remain atop the target. Then, to fire, you squeezed the trigger and lined the crosshairs up with the target’s pip. When the two coincided, the weapon fired. This method works fine for a bolt-action rifle where every round has to be manually chambered, but it’s less than ideal for a carbine, which one might want to fire off-hand (i.e., standing up and aiming) or from the hip. With this in mind, the AR PGFs have a new "free fire mode," in which you can tag a target once and then shoot at it as many times as you want by pulling the trigger directly, with all the shots using the ballistic data from the first shot’s tag.
That means, says writer Lee Hutchinson, a rifle "with essentially 100 percent accuracy at 250 yards."
How many more children will die because of this invention?
I'm going to go with "none in the foreseeable future".
Must we have something worse than Sandy Hook for people to wake up and say "no" to gun violence
How about the Bath School disaster, where 45 people died, mostly children? Or perhaps looking away from human causes, we could consider infant diarrhoea, which kills a couple million children per year and can be cured with a few pennies' worth of salt? How about political violence and genocides, which kill thousands of civilian children?
The simple answer is that there is no simple answer. The Bath School disaster was done with explosives. Infant diarrhoea is mostly a problem because parents don't have access to medical care, or realize that they need it. Political conflict is never so simple as having the good guys fight the bad guys - all sides think their righteous virtues are worth dying for, and worth having innocent people die for.
The reality of life is that it's trivial to kill someone. A human body is an incredibly complex machine, with billions of interacting parts, and it's just so easy to screw it up fatally. Sure, you could ban guns with fancy sights, but it's still just as easy to build a bomb, grab a knife, or slip a bit of poison into a meal.
Let's say "no" to pithy slogans and short-sighted politically-convenient campaigns.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Could this be Linux's killer app that would blow the competition out of the water?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
will be the new level of warfare.
Yes, and not in a good way.
It used to be the case that you needed experienced, diciplined soldiers to make snipers. If you tried to fight a proxy war by arming insurgents the way the U.S. armed the Mujahideen (al Quaeda), or the way Russia is arming Ukranian separatists, then you got a pretty inefficient force that could only win by war of attrition.
These new weapons will make it much easier for anyone with money (like the IS) to recruit people out of the slums and quickly turn them into effective fighting units.
Also it will increase the efficiency of child soliders, and therfore lead to more recruitment.
It is amazing how much misinformation flies around about guns. One of the common ones is "OMG the M4/16 is such crap, the AK is so much bettar!"
You are quite correct about the range. The AR-15 platform weapons are much more accurate. Anyone who has ever fired both can easily tell that.
The issue that people like the grandparent conflate is the lethality of the 5.56x45mm round at longer ranges. Though the M16 can easily hit a target at long range (with a skilled marksman operating it), because of the small size and low mass of the round, it is often not as effective as you would want. If the bullet does not fragment or tumble, it can go right through someone and the small hole does little damage.
That is the issue it has at range, not accuracy or ability to reach that range.
Also this isn't like it is some completely unknown, or unsolvable, thing. The military also has weapons that use 7.62x51mm rounds which are larger rifle bullets and have much greater range, mass, and kinetic energy. For longer engagements still things like 8.58Ã--70mm and 12.7Ã--99mm are used.
Of course as you move up in caliber and amount of propellant, weapons become bigger and heavier, and have larger amounts of recoil to deal with, it is always a tradeoff and is one reason why the standard personal weapons use 5.56.
In terms of 5.56x45mm vs 7.62Ã--39mm (which is what the AK uses, is is not the same as the larger NATO round) the real issues come up at medium range (100-300m) and with barrier penetration. The light, high velocity 5.56 round tends to be fantastically lethal below 100m because the high velocity results in fragmentation when it hits the target. However since military rounds may not be specifically designed to fragment or expand (the Geneva convention prohibits it, civilian and police rounds are available that do), as it slows down at greater ranges they lose that ability and are not as damaging. Also, because of their low mass and tendency to fragment they are poor performers when shooting through barriers like windshields, doors, and so on.
THAT is the issue the rounds have in general use vs 7.62Ã--39mm rounds. Not long ranges. While they aren't super effective beyond 300m, they are reasonably accurate at least, which is not the case with the 7.62 rounds. At a long range engagement an M4 would be at a decided advantage to an AK-47.
However neither was designed for long range use. They are carbines, made for medium range and below. They trade overall power and range for smaller size, lower weight, and better portability. As their widespread use in many conflicts around the world indicates, they do well in that arena.
You would be surprised how bad people shoot in the real world... I hunt. I fire about 50 shots on big game (mostly boar, deer and moose) a year, and well over thousand if you count small game. I compete, primarily in sporting and skeet but also 300 meter rifle.
In my experience the wast majority of shooters have a hard time hitting a deer sized targets with a rifle at 300 meters without special training. Add any sort of complication, like a little bit of stress, moving target, bad light or the like, and most people won't hit a deer sized target consistently (that is, 10 out of 10 in the heart-lung area) at 100 meters. The performance of the cartridge barely matters. Most people simply need a lot of training to aim and fire a rifle well, especially under stress.
I spend a considerable amount of my spare time tracking down deer which were wounded by people with the "Any dope can make a 300 yard shot" attitude. They are typically not quite so tough at 4 am in the morning when we have spent a few hours tracking down the deer they wounded. While it is good training for the dogs, and it is very rewarding work, it would be better if people learned how hard it is to shoot well on distances over 100 meters.
Hi!
I'm a recreational shooter and have at least a passing familiarity with small arms doctrine. This has very little military application.
Why?
Well...
If you are running a crew serviced weapon, what is traditionally thought of as a 'machine gun', you aren't trying to match every bullet to some knucklehead's torso. That isn't your job. Your weapon isn't accurate enough for that sort of milarky. What you can do is drop 600+ rounds a minute in a sustainable way. You end up with what's referred to as a 'beaten' area. Say a machine gun has an accuracy of around 6 MOA.. which they don't. An MOA means minute of angle.. roughly 1" at 100 yards, 2" at 200 yards, and doubles every time you double the distance.
Say you have that super-accurate MG. It's dropping 600 rounds a minute into 6" at 100, a foot at 200, two feet at 400 and etc. Say you've got a guy prone hiding behind a stump at 200 yards. You aren't concerned with trying to one-shot his brain pan. It's far more efficent on your time to drop a 2-3 second burst (20-30 rounds) than take the 5 seconds it'd take to setup a perfect shot with a better weapon. It's about hit probabilities. If you can fill a space with enough bullets fast enough you'll overcome inaccuracy. Accuracy is difficult to achieve in the field. More bullets in a given space is relatively easy.
Rifles work the same way. 3-4 MOA is typical on modern combat rifles. within 200 yards, wind drift and bullet drop is less than your accuracy threshold. At 3 MOA that maybe true all the way to 400 yards. Forcing me to slow down and achieve a 'perfect' aim point doesn't buy me anything -- name of the game is me + 2 or 3 supporting fellows filling the same space with bullets till probability gives us a center punching of the target. IE, 6 rounds into 8 MOA in 5 seconds is more likely to hit center than 2 rounds at 3 MOA in the same time. That's a major part of the point of burst fire. You can't overcome inherit inaccuracy in the system with better aim. Only by recovering from the shot and pulling the trigger faster.
The gizmo can't do that. The combat revolution you envision was achieved decades ago by semi and fully automatic weaponry.