http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfUWuS3AbHs

Naturally, their vision for the future has their scopes on every single firearm. But how useful would a massive, computerized optic be on a standard carbine, especially when the trend is toward lightweight guns and gear? And what about mounting night vision on those things? How about getting a battery runtime longer than a few hours, preferably approaching Aimpoint’s recommendation of replacing their batteries “every few years?” Many questions and hopefully Oren “Silver Medallion” Schauble will be forthcoming with some answers. Yes that really is TP’s marketing director in that video and yes he doesn’t seem to understand that acceleration and gravity are two different forces. Anyway, there’s no doubt that TrackingPoint has a nifty product. But ready for the military? We’ll have to wait and see.

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26 COMMENTS

  1. If they were compact, rugged, had night vision capability, and offered better battery life they wouldn’t be the future of war — they’d be the right now of war.

    • Ding.

      I came here to say the same thing – all consumer products follow the same rough path of becoming smaller, lighter, and cheaper.

      Think first generation Army radio phones.

  2. “he doesn’t seem to understand that acceleration and gravity are two different forces”

    Acceleration isn’t a force. It’s the result of a force being applied to a mass.

    • Oh yeah, there’s plenty, plenty wrong with that video, but gravity is defined as an acceleration.

      Unfortunately, the only direction I was accelerating in after that was towards the sink to scrub out my ears…

      • but gravity is defined as an acceleration.

        Gravity is defined as a force between two or more masses. Acceleration is the result of a net force acting on a mass; it’s the rate of change of velocity. We can have multiple non-zero forces (including the gravitational force) acting on a mass but have zero acceleration, as long as the forces “balance” – i.e. when the sum of all force vectors equals zero.

        For example, an object falling toward the Earth through the atmosphere, after reaching terminal velocity: the velocity at which the gravitational force is exactly opposed by the air resistance (drag) force. Gravitational force is there, but there is no acceleration.

        Or, an object supported by a spring (e.g. hanging from or sitting on a spring scale, in equilibrium). The magnitude of the spring force is exactly equal to the gravitational force but in the opposite direction. Again, the gravitational force is still there but, since it’s opposed by another force of equal magnitude, acceleration is zero.

  3. Wouldn’t those pesky humans be replaced by efficient drones by then, thereby probably negating the need for TP’s product anyway? I’ve seen all the Matrix AND Terminator movies (and was a big fan of the Sarah Connor Chronicles), so I know what’s up.

    • Ugh, wrong, wrong, wrong.

      Robocop will be the ultimate weapon of the future. I’ve seen all 8 robocop movies and even that crap TV spinoff as well.

      Anything else is naive and unrealistic to think about.

  4. Wait a minute. Does surrendering the ability of an infantryman’s rifle to fire to a computer seem like a good idea? Covering fire, anyone?

    With the exception – maybe – of a sniper, I wouldn’t want some fancy scope deciding for me when my rifle will and will not shoot.

  5. Isn’t this the system that prevents the trigger from firing if you do not have a specific target lined up perfectly? What use is that when much of the rounds fired in carbines and other assault weapons are not meant to hit exact specific targets much of the time. Will the system allow one to cover fire ect?
    Being the only good use for these is in war it seems trackingpoint is not ready at all for the market. How many could the military even afford in the future with the political direction most likely going anti-war. Are we going to have 500,000+ tracking point systems collecting dust in some military storage depot or are they going to be, no matter how small the system gets, perched on top of the current or next military combat rifle?
    I know this system will fail in the civilian market for at least a decade or more so I thought trackingpoint would mostly be military at some point soon but honestly this company and product leave me wondering if they should just head back to the drawing board and try again.
    See you in a decade or so trackingpoint.

  6. Anytime someone proposes some piece of hardware or software as the “future of war”, I try to remember the answer is always good, brave people, well trained and supported, willingly going in harm’s way. Damn, but I am feeling old today.

  8. I’m looking forward to the future, when death comes at the touch of a button from a console in a far away city. oh wait, we have that now… hmmmm… ok. maybe then rifles and scopes will be “civilized” warfare….

  9. I think I played that game on the PS3. /sarc

    Potentially good application for improving the accuracy of the average soldier.

    Potentially bad because every shot you take will likely require permission back from HQ Really could take armchair general to a whole new level.

  10. The system is impressive saw it in real life at the gun show as soon as they get the size down to a reg scope and the cost down to 2-3K I am in. think about how much you spend on a AR my wilson was close to 5K withe the can and i haven’t put anything on it yet. Let the snipers have this and they can go to town they would probably run out of ammo

  11. We’ve spent trillions of dollars (when they were worth something) on nukes and now we’re going to pin the future of the country on a scope. A scope. What the hell are we thinking?

  12. Seems a bit impractical for anything less then sniping, they should probably at least wait until they’ve made it smaller.

  13. It makes me think of the promotional videos for some of the very large airsoft/milsim games I’ve been to.

  15. OK, here’s why the idea of TrackingPoint scopes on military weapons is stupid on steroids:

    1. When you have well trained infantry riflemen and sharpshooters, you can’t take that talent away from them. There is no way to pull that training out of their head and hand it to some talentless hack.

    Furthermore, our marksmen can apply their talents to any rifle they pick up on the field. No batteries required, no scopes, no fancy gee-gaws. Hand a Marine a SKS and he’ll outshoot the guy that used to own it, eight ways to Sunday.

    2. OK, so we put these expensive baubles into the hands of a bunch of talentless recruits under the idea that we’re going to turn them all into marksmen with the wave of a pen over a budget line item. Why not? We seem to be mandating affirmative action in every other sphere of public employment and military recruiting, so why not? Let’s hand out expensive glassware to people who can’t even add without a calculator, much less evidence any actual marksmanship.

    OK, so their batteries go dead. They’re now dead in a pitched engagement because they can’t shoot well enough without the gee-gaw. Brilliant own goal #1.

    3. Now the worm turns and comes back to bite us in the ass: One of our advantages (or perhaps former advantages now) is that our military fields men who can read, write and do mathematics. The opposition these days are a bunch of illiterates who, as many a YouTube video will attest, aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed – but they’re plenty able to use our consumer electronic gadgetry against us, from iPhones down to computers, they’re plenty happy to use our technology. Now, imagine some of these TrackingPoint scopes fall into the hands of those who chant “Allah akbar” every time they hang a mortar round – and now we have talent-in-a-box snipers on the field of battle, picking our people off.

    Brilliant own goal #2.

    Yea, that’s what we should want for our guys: bigger threats from idiotic high-dollar consumer electronics turned loose in the hands of illiterate thugs. It isn’t bad enough the cell phone technology we invented is being used to kill our guys with IED’s, now we’re going to let the enemy pick off our guys from 800 yards out? Brilliant.

  16. Good God, even the military recruitment videos don’t look this Hollywood. Besides, anything that allows our military to become dumber, doesn’t help, they already recruit enough dipshits as it is.

  17. How I think this might be effective:

    A drone (or maybe even satellite) tags the targets and the soldiers with the TP scoped-rifles neutralize the targets from the ground. Instead of getting the soldiers to deal with the aim-tag-shoot thing, the recon drone could do all of the soldiers’ target acquisition. They’d be able to know where almost every target in the combat zone was. From there, they’d be able to shoot and move with much more efficiency.

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