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Comment by ryanmarsh | Hacker News Reader

Marksmanship isn’t a problem. I don’t understand what problem this solves except for snipers. Most infantry engagements happen within 150yds. Anything further (like across a mountain valley in Afghanistan) your target is the muzzle flashes of the enemy. Is this thing going to be an aimbot for muzzle flashes? This is where crew served weapons come in handy, and snipers. This device would not have helped me getting ambushed within 100yards or being the first guy in the door on a raid.

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> Most infantry engagements happen within 150yds.

An Army study found that in Afghanistan, >50% of all engagements happen at a distance of greater than 500m. This is the reason for all the current work to extend the range of the average infantryman. A case could be made that some of that work is overspecializing for conditions that might not reoccur in future wars. For example, Pentagon is currently pushing hard for replacing the 5.56 with a 6.8 cartridge that is more powerful than the 7.62 NATO. That would make for a nice sniping round, but maybe not the best when kicking in doors and suppressing people close by?

It solves not enough money in the pockets of the vendor problem. Might ultimately allow a stepdown in training and be good for SWAT.

I'm pretty sure you could put a weight at the end of the barrel with some actuators in it to drive the barrel the MOA changes necessary to center on a spot.

SWAT engagements are typically at point blank range and are entirely reflexive firing.

Combat and swat raids have little in common with video games.

Of course, but sometimes they break out the bolt actions with big glass. This might provide a little more assurance of a hit, esp if training budgets don't allow for folks to stay razor sharp.

I doubt it's integrated at this time but it would also allow for a workflow to authorize shots (and of course record the whole thing).

Law enforcement precision shooting is almost always done inside of 100 yards. 150 tops. Timing and liability is a bigger problem.

You're not thinking big enough. What new tactics would become viable if a soldier of average ability could reliably hit a target at 1000 yards? You can't just take new technology and limit your imagination to how it works with existing tactics. You have to imagine the new tactics. If you don't, you're as useful as a battleship in WWII (not very).

What new tactics would become viable if a soldier of average ability could reliably hit a target at 1000 yards?

Basically this has been the pipe dream of all armies, once bolt action rifles matured, and all the way up through WWII.

If you don't, you're as useful as a battleship in WWII (not very).

Capital ships like Carriers can't be everywhere at once, and there were a lot of WWII engagements involving cruisers, destroyers, and smaller craft. So, what is the difference between a cruiser and a battleship? Basically scale.

This "guaranteed hit" tech basically tries to solve the trigger pull and flinch problems. It might be quite useful if it could be scaled down to handgun size in a red-dot like form factor.

And you're not understanding that this is probably the wrong problem to solve. It is a solution in search of a problem. We already can provide accurate fire further than we can see. What we need to improve is proper target identification, coordination and tracking of friendlies, improved intelligence, better knowledge of culture/language, and grand strategy against insurgencies, to name a few.

To put this another way: training a sniper is really hard and expensive. However, it's not the marksmanship that's the hard part. It's the camouflage, field-craft, spotting, intelligence gathering, and tactics to integrate into the rest of the unit that are the difficult things to teach.

I'm not sure why you listed those complaints because that is exactly what a smart weapon with a screen could be used for.

>What we need to improve is proper target identification,

Assuming the rifles are networked with each other then it only takes one source of target information and the whole squad will be aware of potential targets. (e.g. someone marks a target, a drone spots a target -> the targets are shown on all rifles)

>coordination and tracking of friendlies

The rifle should be capable of detecting other soldiers that are in the rifle network.

That would be a totally different technology from that presented here. But one that would potentially solve some issues. It's not dissimilar to the land warrior program. That was abandoned because nobody wanted to hump around the batteries and crap.

The reality is, we evolved to be pretty efficient social predators. Attempts to augment our natural ways of acting in crisis need to be really well matched to innate ways of thinking to be useful.

Think about it this way. When driving around with your GPS, music, and passengers and you encounter something distressing like being lost or seeing a complicated traffic situation up ahead that induces a moment of panic, the natural response is to cut away all the crap and limit the flow of information through you to the absolutely most essential. It's quite possible that it may be nearly impossible to do that with augmented reality systems like you are describing.

Most fire is suppressing fire. If you could have the equivalent of suppressing fire without needing to waste bullets that'd be a huge change.

>>The SMASH [...] "allows the weapon to fire only when it's a guaranteed hit," he said.

This "capability" sounds somewhat contrary to the purpose of suppressing fire.

Suppressing fire is used to keep the enemy’s head down and to reduce their volume of fire even from defilade so that you can move shoot and communicate. Obviously it is preferable to kill your enemy but you can’t always see them.

If they know there's a high probability they'll be hit they'll adapt their behavior. The uncertainty of whether or not you're painted is significant.

This doesn't solve the problem of "I know the enemy is in that general direction, but I cant see them" which is more or less why you might use suppressing fire.

Like a weapon sight that only releases the hammer when the target is more than 90% likely to be hit. This should be a selector switch to disable if desired for free gunning.

I don’t understand what problem this solves except for snipers

Mount this system on a relatively small, silent drone. (There's two more problems to solve, right there, however.) That would be relevant to outdoor recon.

This device would not have helped me getting ambushed within 100yards or being the first guy in the door on a raid.

Not what "this device" is meant to address.

There is no need to mount the weapon on the drone. Use the drone to send targeting information to the rifles.

It seems to me that, if anything, this sort of technology is more useful for a guerilla force. Would you agree with that assessment?

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