War is Boring:
THE ACTUAL
This week at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, firearms-manufacturer TrackingPoint announced an AR-15 version of its computer-controlled precision rifles. The company claims that the new weapon can hit moving targets “out to five football fields away.” And anyone can use it.Described by the company as a “precision-guided firearm,” the 500-Series rifle could revolutionize how armies all over the world prepare for war. The technology promises a world where expert riflemen can be trained with very little effort—blurring the distinction between infantry and sharpshooters.Tank technology
TrackingPoint rifles include what are known as a ballistic computers. Used for decades on tanks, a ballistic computer takes into account a number of factors—wind speed, barrel and ambient temperature, range to target and ballistic performance of the cannon round—and computes what it would take to hit a target.The computer then compensates for those factors and makes corrections when the shot is fired. It makes tank guns extraordinarily accurate and is the reason why an M-1 Abrams has a 90-percent hit rate on a moving target 2,000 yards away.The size and complexity of the ballistic computer, as well as the sensors it needs—weather sensors, thermometers and laser rangefinders—are why these computers have, until now, stayed on tanks. However, miniaturization has finally made both processors and sensors small enough to mount on individual rifles.The TrackingPoint ballistic computer runs off Linux and is about the size of a pint glass. It has the same set of built-in sensors as a tank. The shooter acquires the target in the built-in heads-up display and places a red ‘X’ over it. This locks the rifle on the target. The shooter pulls the trigger, but the rifle doesn’t fire—yet.The computer takes into account known bullet performance, sensor data and even barrel wear. It crunches this data, determines when the rifle is on target and then fires.And it will hit the target.
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