TrackingPoint, Inc., a precision guided rifle development company operating out of Austin, Texas, has developed breakthrough technology that claims to put jet fighter lock-and-launch technology onto a combat rifle, making sniper-level accuracy available to the average shooter.
Jason Schauble, the president of TrackingPoint, has taken on many challenges in his time. A past vice president of Remington’s Global Military Products, he is also a retired special ops Marine captain who won both Silver and Bronze Star medals in Iraq. Schaubel is now applying his "bold leadership, wise judgment, and complete dedication to duty" to leading TrackingPoint out of stealth mode and into a prominent position in the world of advanced tactical weapons.
TrackingPoint claims that their patent pending Intelligent Digital Tracking Scopes (tracking scopes) will allow an unskilled accurately hit long-range targets. How?
Initially, the view through a tracking scope is simply a magnified view of the target along an axis parallel to the rifle barrel. The shooter first "tags" a target by choosing a desired impact point on the target's surface. An electronic display adds a red dot that indicates the desired impact point, which remains fixed on the target as the direction of the rifle changes.
If the shooter fired the gun at this point, the result would be a clean miss. Between gravity, atmospheric drag, parallax, and cross-winds, bullets don't follow a straight path. What the shooter needs is a firing solution telling him where to point the rifle barrel so the bullet will hit the desired impact point when fired.
Now the riflescope computer displaces the aiming cross-hairs so that they indicate the bullet's impact point as predicted by the firing solution. If the trigger is now squeezed, the rifle will not fire until the desired impact point and the predicted impact point are sufficiently close together. At 1000 yards (914 m), most shots should hit within the width of a single hand.
In January, TrackingPoint plans to introduce three precision guided rifles. The XS1 will be a tactical rifle chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, one the remaining candidates for the new US special ops sniper caliber. The XS2, and XS3 will be smaller versions of the XS1 chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum cartridges.
Rumors of retail prices in the US$15-20K range have been reported, but there have been no formal announcements as yet. The video below gives a useful summary of TrackingPoint's efforts to date combined with their aspirations.
Source: TrackingPoint, via The Firearm Blog
The Abrams tank uses laser doppler measurement, but I don't see anything that looks like a laser tube on that hardware, so it's probably got a built in scintillation anemometer.
My questions are: 1. Is that price only for the scope system? 2. Must the scope system be matched to a particular weapon? 3. Is it the whole system powered up all the time, or do the bells and whistles only get turned on when needed? 4. What is the heat signature of the system? 5. Effective battery life before replacements are required.
2.Object tracking will look something like face tracking on a digital camera able to differentiate between object types, and able to lock on to moving targets.
3.Ammunition selector will have multiple feeds and load ammunition relevant to the target. This will be delivered either through a rotating multi-calibre barrel or single rail.
4.The unit will receive environmental information from the portable terminal and correlate satellite imagery with rifle view to shoot through smoke or fog.
5.Rifle eye will be multi-wavelength, able to lock on to targets behind objects like thin walled structures.
6.Multi-object tracking would allow such a unit to fire multiple rounds in a consecutive manner without pausing between shots to re-establish lock.