You can only really silence subsonic bullets. The silencer reduces the muzzle blast, but supersonic bullets make a loud cracking sound (a sonic boom) just by moving through the air. There aren’t many rifle rounds that are subsonic and the slower bullets drop more and are affected more by wind. Whether this computer is enough to make up for that and still make a good shot, I don’t know.
Nitpick:
.308 Winchester is almost identical to 7.62x51mm NATO. Can be fired interchangeably.
You probably meant .308 to 5.56(.223)?
I see a rather large hole in your logic.
This is just another variation on the ‘Assault Rifle’ debate. There are lots of things that can make a gun more deadly in theory yet don’t translate into the real-world threat that people like to imagine them to be. Rifles, especially hunting rifles, are already excellent tools for long-range sniping yet we see vanishingly few people murdered in that way. That isn’t going to change just because it is easier to hit a target from far away. Millions of reasonably proficient marksman can hit human sized targets at 200 or more yards already all day long and yet almost no one commits murder that way.
It turns out that murder by firearm is still almost exclusively an up close and personal crime usually done from a few yards at most and the vast majority of those are done using handguns even though rifles are vastly more deadly and accurate. Nothing about technology is going to change that. I am not saying that there won’t be any sniping type murders ever from technology like this, only that it will be so rare that it is insignificant and any that do occur would simply replace those done by rifles that are already available.
This technology has a big positive though even in the crime realm. Increased accuracy on any firearm is a good thing. It is best that the shooter hit the intended target whether they are committing a crime or not. The alternative is desperate spray fire if they initially miss their target and that can and does hit innocent bystanders. The enhanced accuracy of a particular weapon isn’t going to convince someone to commit a sniping murder if they wouldn’t have anyway otherwise so it is an overall positive to public safety if their shot goes where they expect it to.
I am with the crowd that says this is really not a big worry. The rifle has a lot going against it that makes it unlikely to be used by the common criminal.
It costs between 17 and 22 thousand.
It is large and bulky weighing approximately 20 pounds.
The optics are sensitive and must be carefully cared for.
For optimal results you need to use specialized ammo that costs 7 dollars a shot, and is only sold through the manufacturer.
The rifle does not account for windage, the operator must estimate the windspeed on their own. I’m not sure a casual shooter could predict windspeed well enough to make a 1k yard shot possible even with the computer doing everything else.
The firing system is not super intuitive, it would require some training to learn how to shoot this rifle.
Are there even 1000 yard sightlines in urban areas where this rifle could be used to its full potential?
For less then 500 dollars you could purchase a rifle and scope combo that could easily hit a man sized target at over a hundred yards.
Correct. The typical and (very ignorant) American citizen (and even more so in other parts of the world) comes up with fictitious scenarios based on their extremely naive knowledge every time they hear something like this.
The fact of the matter is that the weapon in question is just one tool of many if you wanted to kill a single person or a large group of people and it isn’t ideal for real-world situations for any of them. If you want to kill large groups of innocent people, you can do that through a variety of means, most of them completely legal and freely available. Timothy McVeigh and others just used a rental truck filled with fertilizer and diesel fuel to blow up a large building. The Boston Marathon Bombers used common cooking appliances to bring a large city to its knees for days. Good luck stopping that through fertilizer or cooking restrictions. Even if you did, there is almost an infinite number of other possibilities out there.
You could potentially kill anyone with a varmint rifle like they use to hunt groundhogs in the Midwest. They are designed to hit targets much smaller than a human baby at greater than 300 yards yet almost no one is ever intentionally shot that way. Why is that?
Don’t confuse the tools available with the motivation. The tools are always available for a creative person (or even someone that isn’t brain dead). The tools and impetus for those very rare crimes are completely separate issues and require very different strategies to deal with. Even when they do occur, they don’t mean that everyone has to live in fear all the time. Remember, crime is down across the board…severely no matter what your grandparents say. It is at an all time low for most crimes even murder in the U.S. yet some people love to engage in fear mongering.
Most of the things on your list are likely to diminish over time.
Yes the scope is expensive but then once upon a time a gun, any gun, was very expensive. In time they became inexpensive and ubiquitous.
Shagnasty posits easier means to kill people and in many cases that is correct but then we did have the DC snipers several years ago and Charles Whitman way back. We do not see a lot of it though because sniping takes a lot of skill.
One reason the president of the US is not attacked more often is that it is exceptionally hard to get away with it. Imagine snipers being able to sit 1000 yards away and have a good expectation of a hit with little skill on their part and a good expectation of getting away afterwards. I’d bet you dollars to dimes if this was a relatively inexpensive thing several people would have tried to take down Obama by now.
Not to mention random psychos who think it would be fun (ala the DC sniper).
I am not worried about it today but the door has been opened. The tech can only get cheaper and more reliable and easier to use.
As for estimating wind speed and humidity and all that you can buy a handheld device that does it for you for less than $100.
As for sight lines in a city that long that is easy…plenty of boulevards running straight as an arrow through most cities for miles.
For the entire length of the 1000 yard shot? For $100?
Some things will get cheaper but I’m willing to bet the whole package will be well out of reach of the common man. A rifle with that kind of moa will never be cheap due to the required precision, and testing. Custom one off rounds will always be super expensive. Generally to get that kind of insane accuracy the load has to be tailored to that one particular gun. And optics that provide the ability to see clearly to that distance are not anywhere near cheap. Also when shooting for that kind of accuracy you will not be popping off multiple shots. Guys that shoot extremely long ranges let their barrel cool between shots.
You think if the technology was available for 100 dollars they would add it to the 22k rifle.
Is there anything short of a Doppler radar installation(if that) that can judge the wind speed for the entire 1000 yards? Something hand held?
How can even an expert sniper and his/her spotter judge that along all 1000 yards and what do you dial in to the scope to account for varying wind speeds along a 1000 yard shot?
Somehow they still make those shots though.
According to the article linked in the OP the noob shooter was shooting on a windy day and hit the target.
How does the human user designate the target, so the gun knows what to auto-aim at? You can’t just do it by pointing at the target you want hit, because if you could do that, you wouldn’t need the auto-aim at all.
Maybe but it can get a lot cheaper.
This kind of stuff will never be used by gang-bangers and thugs. Even if it cost $100 they wouldn’t use it. Pistols are by far preferred by that sort. Maybe shotguns if going bigger.
No, this would be used by would-be assassins and crazy people (ala Charles Whitman or the DC snipers). Near $20,000 keeps it out of reach of all but the most dedicated but get it down to $2,000 or less and I doubt the cost would be much of a deterrent.
The first general purpose computer cost around $6 million in today’s money. A $35 calculator today is more powerful.
Not sure how you designate the target. I assume the image processors are able to discern the thing you tagged from everything else. If you have ever played with Photoshop you might be surprised at how good this stuff is at distinguishing different objects in a picture. Hell, my cell phone can remove unwanted people walking through my photos with the touch of a button.
From what I understand is once you put the red dot on the target it will follow the target (even putting arrows on the screen like a video game to tell you where the target is if you move off target) and when you put the “X” over the red dot and all other parameters you dialed in (wind speed and so on) are within tolerance the gun automatically fires. So…just drifting across the target dot the gun shoots for you in what it deems the perfect instant to make the shot.
Did they say how many shots he took before he started hitting the target? In the article he also had another man tracking his shots on an ipad. Considering that this was a test shoot for publication I would be surprised if the gun manufactures were not helping him with wind speed calculations.
Here is a link for estimating wind speeds and how they affect point of aim.
Reading the article the “wind was blowing like crazy”, the shooter had never shot a rifle before in his life and it seems he hit the target on his first try.
Not sure how much the spotter helped. I got the impression not much but could be wrong.
Note in the article the shooter pulled the trigger and nothing happened. The computer waited for favorable conditions then fired when things were ideal. Pulling the trigger in this case merely seems to tell the computer shoot whenever it thinks things are good.
Reading it again it was his first try:
“It’s his very first try.”
Some stuff will get cheaper, but there is no way that it will comparable to your computer and calculator analogy.
Here is a link to a site selling the rifle that is used as the base for their project.
Here is a scope that was recommended by the fellows on the site that I linked to. So about 1300 for the scope and 7665 for the rifle assuming that the rifle price is in USD. That puts us at a cost of 8965 for just the most basic of equipment. Optics and gunsmithing are established technologies and unlikely to come down in price. That means they are adding about $13035 to the cost of the rifle with their technology. A certain percentage of this will be labor. To pay a gunsmith to do such extensive work to the trigger system and develop an accurate round will not be cheap. These costs will also be unlikely to lower as I doubt the economy of scale will come into play with such a boutique rifle. The question is, how much of their cost is tied up in the technology and how much cost is simply grunt work. Even if we halved the markup over our base price over time to 7500, we are still looking at a 16k rifle.
Sounds like Steve had help with the wind adjustments on his shot.
While I don’t believe for one second that we’re suddenly going to see a whole bunch of shootings from this - or even any in the short to medium term, if counter what you’re saying with a few thoughts
There’s a huge difference between probably hitting something at 300 metres, and almost certainly hitting it at 1000. I’d guess, that in a city environment you’d be lucky to hear a rifle that was fired from inside a room 1000 metres away. And at 300 metres people around the victim have got a pretty decent chance of spotting the shooter - at 1000 you’d hardly know where to even look.
Again it’s just a guess - but I’d estimate that the chances of getting away with it are probably 10 times greater (or more) at 1km than at 300 metres - and maybe as 20 times more than at 100 metres.
Also, while $20k is a pretty substantial sum, just think how many people can drop that sort of money without even thinking…I’ve been in a room full of gamblers, in a very small casino in a small town, and seen that amount wagered per hand per person…$20k is really no impediment