I obviously want one of these :)<p>The place where this kind of thing would be most useful is integrated into a CROWS mount -- a fully automated turret which can be put on top of a vehicle, in static emplacements, etc. Being able to make single, aimed, highly accurate shots on vehicles approaching a checkpoint from a .50bmg mounted on an unattended vehicle up forward would be really nice, since you could then not put any of your own forces at risk, while taking single shots to the engine (to disable the vehicle) vs. unloading on the vehicle with multiple bursts (which would be highly likely to kill the occupants, who may not be "bad guys").<p>Deskilling the precision marksman job isn't as important -- a real sniper needs huge amounts of other training beyond precision shooting, so the shooting training isn't the biggest barrier there, and the level of skill required for ordinary police 100-200m designated marksman isn't really much for the shooting, so much as for shoot/no shoot, various intermediate/barrier materials, etc.<p>The only way to do police levels of accuracy at 1000m would be with some kind of actively guided round; they generally won't accept a shot a military sniper would consider acceptable, as it's usually for hostage rescue situations. A military sniper is probably ok with taking a shot where if he misses, another enemy beside the one he's trying to kill gets killed instead, most of the time, as long as his odds of hitting the target are high enough. So those shots can be in the 600-1500m range. I've never heard of police shots beyond 300m. They're usually 50-150m but often with glass or other barrier material between them and the target.
I'll pass. I'd rather have my Accuracy International Arctic Warfare and my Schmidt und Bender scope and save the extra $10,000 for ammo. My rifle is a .308 Winchester but for that money, I could have easily bought the .338 Lapua version and still had several crates of match-grade ammo, a Bluetooth wind gauge, and a nice ballistics computer app for my iPhone.<p>My AW rifle: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/7960052026/in/set-72157631475228416/lightbox/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/7960052026/in/set-72...</a><p>My S&B scope: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/7960054928/in/set-72157631475228416/lightbox/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/7960054928/in/set-72...</a><p>I don't understand the point of this rifle. Is it to enable non-shooters to shoot? It's not hard to learn how to shoot. With an afternoon of instruction and a few practice sessions, you can hit 1000 yd targets with a normal scoped precision rifle without much difficulty.
Having played with the iPad simulator for a few minutes - probably the best "feature" of this weapon, is the "Fire and Confirm" feature for hunting - that is, after you place a pip on your target, the weapon doesn't fire until you take the time to confirm your target. This gives you the opportunity to determine whether a heartbeat moved the gun a few millimeters (which, at 200 Yard+ range, could mean the difference between an immediate kill, and injuring the animal).<p>It will be interesting to see whether that ability to confirm a shot, is mitigated by hunters who would normally consider 200 yards to be the extreme end of their range, now taking 500 yard shots.
This is pretty fucked up. The author conveniently ignores the fact that sniper mass killings have already happened (e.g. the Washington sniper). The reason we do not get more sniper mass killings is that it takes a lot of skill to hit a target at a very long range with a sniper rifle.<p>This rifle of course removes the skill element and allows for shooting at an extremely long range.
Even at $17,000, I give it less than a year before it's banned in California.<p>It seems as though it doesn't do on-the-fly wind calculations, as they (or at least the preface) mentions having to dial it in, but if they could a 360° wind sensor onboard, this will almost certainly eliminate the need for a spotter on sniper missions.<p>Couple this with a .50 cal Barrett (instead of a .338 lapua) and I'm guessing there will be a huge military contract, but it looks like the 338 is the biggest round a Surgeon will fire (though I admittedly know nothing about the 6.5 creedmoor.)
<i>> I'd argue that it's far more likely a mass shooting event would take place with conventional firearms than with a PGF; a bolt-action hunting rifle isn't exactly the quickest method of getting a lot of lead on a lot of different targets. The very nature of the PGF's "Tag-Track-Xact" scope encourages methodical target selection at range, and hauling even a hypothetical smaller PGF into a crowded place and letting loose would be enormously difficult. It's not a close-quarters weapon by any stretch of the imagination.</i><p>Sure it's not a close-quarters weapon, but a imagine a mass shooting where the shooter was a mile from the deaths: almost untraceable, and very hard to stop in a short time, so the shooter could sit and pick off targets for twenty minutes.
Another good user report is from Bryan Jones: <a href="http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2013/01/tracking-point/" rel="nofollow">http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2013/01/tracking-poi...</a>
The more distant a man is from his quarry, the less compunction he feels. One bad consequence of this technology is that by permitting accuracy from a much longer range, it thereby further lowers barriers to homicidally bad behavior.