Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-powered rifle

Re:Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-pow... by rdl on Sunday March 31, 2013 @11:44PM (#5471313)

I believe there are already ATF issues with remote firing, and they could make an argument that this supports remote firing and heavily restrict it, if they want. There were target (pistols? rifles? I forget) with electronic triggers for a while, but they got banned in competition. The Remington 700 EtronX was essentially stillborn in 2004 too.

The spotter in a 2-man (or for some ops, 3-man) team provides a lot of value beyond just wind -- both local security and usually being the senior person, command (and communication with those beyond the team). It's kind of the same thing as with tanks -- we can autoload the main gun, going from a 4-man to 3-man crew, but a 4-man tank can generally be self sufficient on the battlefield; a 3-man tank crew really has a hard time.

It would be maybe more meaningful for a police or other static precision marksman situation, where it usually is a one-man sniper deployment in radio contact with command. But most police shots are very short range (100-200 meter), where .308 or .300winmag are less affected by most wind.

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Re:Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-pow... by cdash on Sunday March 31, 2013 @11:56PM (#5471344)

I think the largest application would be making a sniper out of a non-sniper. The guy in the video had never fired a rifle before and was able to hit the target dead center at 1,000 yards. If you can lower the costs enough, everyone would be a sniper.

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Re:Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-pow... by rdl on Monday April 01, 2013 @12:01AM (#5471360)

It would work for "turn a Rifleman into a Designated Marksman", but turning a random person into a great 1000 yard shot is not going to turn them into a conventional sniper (which implies a huge array of other skills beyond shooting).

Turning the DM in a squad into someone who can go from 400-600m to 1000m would be pretty useful, though.

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Re:Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-pow... by RyJones on Monday April 01, 2013 @01:00AM (#5471546)

The worst issues with the ETronX were not legal, but technical. Primers killed it.

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Re:Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-pow... by bmelton on Monday April 01, 2013 @12:06AM (#5471374)

This isn't remote firing though. At least if I read it correctly, this just moves all the functions of a spotter into the reticle itself, where it automatically does calculations. You still have to aim, pull the trigger, etc.

Otherwise, I don't disagree with anything you've said, except to perhaps posit that despite the general utility of a 4-man tank, how much combat is going to be offloaded to drones that can be just as lethal without putting any men in harm's way whatsoever?

Edit: It's also probably worth noting that with a few more iterations of the tech, they can do away with the pin-blocking technique they're using and just calculate more in realtime, perhaps with a secondary trigger or button to initiate 'live-targeting' so that the trigger can be manually activated by the trigger pull instead of on a delayed mechanical system.

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