Real-world aimbot: The $17,000 rifle with a Linux-powered scope | Hacker News Reader

Real-world aimbot: The $17,000 rifle with a Linux-powered scope

extremetech.com

42 pointsLibertatea76 comments

I'd just like to point out something that nobody has addressed so far, which is that this setup triples the accurate range of the rifle compared to a human operator. That is absolutely astonishing. If the accurate range increase would apply to larger caliber rifles, this means that with a .50 sniper rifle, it could be used to snipe targets almost a mile away. It wouldn't even take a human sniper being in position.

...In fact, the $17,000 price tag is probably cheaper than training a human sniper. I'm sure we'll see this in military use in the next 20 years.

This system in no way triples the effective range of these rifles. The "error budget" analysis in the Army Research Laboratory report is purely estimated; it's not based on real world observations. Unless I'm reading it wrong, the error budget analysis is pure fiction.

Take the hit percentages from Table 5 for the .300WM - they claim a baseline hit percentage of only 34% at 600 yards which is ridiculously low. I've directly observed marksmen shooting the (far inferior) .223 cartridge at 600 yards with open sights at one of the more difficult ranges in the U.S. With no spotting, hit percentages are consistently close to 100%.

We see snipers in operational environments getting kills at over a mile with a .338 Lapua - one of the longest was 2600 yards. According to this report, that sniper would have had only a 4% chance of making the shot if is was 1000 yards closer.

I don't see any way to rectify what we see in the real world with the conclusions from this report.

> I'm sure we'll see this in military use in the next 20 years.

The individual technologies in this new integrated scope have been available in dedicated spotting scopes for years. The advancement here seems to be packaging it up into a single weapon-mountable scope. I don't think there's a whole lot of value add for this setup for the military over the separate spotting systems currently in use.

Yow, if you're reading that correctly, then no one should be bothering to buy .338 Lapua rifles, since their whole point is to get reliable results beyond the 800-1200 yards you can in theory get from .30 envelope rounds like .308/7.62 NATO and .300 WM, but without the gross overkill of .50 BMG, which was intended for a material destruction role, not anti-personal.

Right, yet in real life we see effective use of those rounds out to double that 1200 yard range.

And, of course, accuracy is only one part of effectiveness. Stopping power is also important, especially in the military role, and varies greatly between cartridges; for instance .338LM is something like 5000 ft.lbs. at the muzzle vs. .308 which is somewhere around 2900.

Regarding .50 BMG - I'm not sure there is such thing as overkill if you're one of those guys on a two-way range. ;)

Heh, but with 63% more muzzle energy than .338 LM ... well, I don't have to tell you this, but for the larger audience we're talking about a heavier weapon and more recoil, a lot more muzzle blast (more likely to be observed by the enemy), the rounds are heavier and bigger (pxlpshr has a point about the impracticability), etc. etc. Snipers have used it mostly because it was available, not because it was well suited for the purpose. And of course sometimes they're called upon to ... discretely destroy material.

They haven't caught on yet, but Barrett and others have been working on cartridges with 400 instead of 600 grain bullets and noticeably less energy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.416_Barrett#Muzzle_velocity

I thought the .416 Barrett was basically designed to get around laws that explicitly prohibit .50 BMG, rather than to be a superior alternative. (It's possible I'm thinking of .408 Cheytac here though.)

Partly, but since Barrett has a firm policy of not selling to jurisdictions like California that ban civilian use of .50 BMG only so much. It's also intended to be a superior alternative for the non-material sniping role,

All very good points. I don't really follow wildcat cartridge development, but the .416 does look like it fills a gap.

Not at all clear except on calm days; all my readings about sniping and very long range target shooting talk about the need to read the winds way beyond the location of the shooter. Long target ranges have flags at intervals, snipers have to learn how to read it from vegetation movement and so on.

Interesting. I suppose at such long distances one can no longer assume that wind speed is the same at the target's location. I wonder if tech like this could be made to also read wind speed from vegetation movement?

I shoot service rifle at 600 yards on a range with wind flags at 100 yard intervals. It's not uncommon at that range for the wind to be blowing in opposite directions at each interval. At that range you can make an accurate read on the wind speed at the target purely from the mirage, reading vegetation movement is not necessary.

My understanding is that down range wind sensing systems do so by reading the mirage as well.

I don't know if it is the same thing that you are alluding to, but LIDAR can be used to measure distant wind speeds. I don't know if the output would be suitable for shooting, but it has been used in sailing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR#Meteorology_and_atmosphe...

http://optics.org/article/34878

http://www.gizmag.com/catch-the-wind-racers-edge-laser-wind-...

That's cool stuff. Seems like it could be useful if it could be miniaturized.

ETA: The binocluar device in the last link is pretty close, if they can extend the range from 300m and drop the price tag from $150K!

... assuming it works as well as this PR piece suggests. But even if it doesn't, the tech will certainly evolve to something incredible in the next 20 years.

You are exactly right.

Next step: quadcopter based delivery of a gun like this (presumably one with a shorter or retractable barrel). Imagine: from the comfort of your office 1000's of kilometers away, you can have a gun fly out of a container, fly to the mark's backyard, wait until he gets home, shoot him in the head, and fly off before the cops or anyone else has a chance to even realize what happened! I've thought about the idea several times over the last few years, way cool that at least part of it is working. Or way scary, depending on how you look at it.

Although this one just had a camera on it, it comes pretty close: http://boingboing.net/2013/01/08/what-the-moose-was-thinking...

like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU ?

why… have you been thinking so long about 'remote murders'?

Well not so much thinking about (committing) murders, more hypothesizing on what the next logical evolution of drones would be, and how (once they have been developed and mass-produced by the military) they will be used by organized crime.

It makes me sad that software like Linux written in a benevolent co-operative spirit ends up being used for such a purpose.

Makes you wonder if there needs to be a software license with a stipulation along the lines of "must not be used for evil", though I guess that would need defining.

JSON cannot be used for evil, unless you have permission from Crockford: http://www.json.org/license.html

Incidentally, IBM have permission from Crockford to be evil or to have evil sublicensees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=764024

And that clause is (widely considered) a bad idea, because "evil" is relative (e.g. some people think abortions are evil, others don't).

http://www.sonatype.com/people/2012/03/use-json-well-youd-be... http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article46/json-license http://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#Criticism

"must not be used for evil"

But what's evil? If you eat the deer, is hunting it evil?

Yes, some of us regard the unnecessary killing of other sentient creatures as evil.

So you're vegan and don't use any animal products?

Linux is just used for embedded stuff now, what's the difference if they use Linux or some custon Ada realtime OS?

The valley wouldn't exist without the cold war, there is always two sides of the coin.

... because guns are evil?

More of an autofire than an aimbot. Those were used to make it more difficult to spot a cheater in-game while watching from his point of view because the aiming process still looked natural — the crosshair didn't magically jumped to the target. The cheat just chose the best moment to fire.

Wow, if online cheaters were not difficult enough to catch already! Without client-side verification (such as PunkBuster) it sounds "even more" impossible to distinguish between really good players and cheaters. I wonder if such libraries are still being developed.

Such libraries are constantly being developed. There's a very large market for cheats for online video games, especially highly competitive ones (Counter-strike, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft).

Actually, for civilian (or police) purposes I'd like to see a system that lets you mark targets that you don't want to hit, then automatically prevents you from shooting at or near them when you're aiming at your real target.

What is the point, there is no skill in this....oh wait...you get to press a button to select the target, yeah 1337 skills required for this. On the upside, hopefully the animals will suffer less due to better accuracy on kill zone.

Personally hunting is not my thing but I have no problem with others hunting, this rifle, however, just seems a step too far.

I had a similar reaction to the hunting shown in the video, but if you're shooting for animal control purposes rather than recreation it makes more sense.

The expense of the weapon system and ammunition probably outweigh any gain in efficiency when eradicating varmints. The .300 ammunition capable of accuracy at 900m is overkill for shooting coyotes.

Let's be clear, for someone stalking a mountain goat there are plausible reasons for the weapon, but the main target market is gun collectors.

In some places in the US, deer are pests, and state conservation agents actually shoot them to thin their numbers. Otherwise, lacking a sufficient number of natural predators in the area, the population would explode to a number greater than the land could handle. This would cause a significant portion of the deer population to die of famine and disease, and cause local flora and crops to be eaten bare.

Actually, wildlife bounties are more common than you think and are often offered to the general public. This isn't a complete listing (as I know some Maine counties offer bounties on coyotes and yet it isn't listed), but gives you a general idea: http://www.bornfreeusa.org/b4a2_bounty.php

There's still some skill required, if you can't hold the rifle in a firm and steady way it's not going to work. Probably wouldn't take that long to teach something that, but from experience as a JROTC rifle team member helping to teach all the cadets it's not trivial.

Consumer tech like this scares the crap out of me.

This isn't really consumer technology. It's privatized military research marketed as a hunting weapon.

This is a gun built for the military so virtually anyone can be a deadly sniper, amateurs include. It's 10x more accurate from nearly 2x the distance, more secure and safer (friendly fire protection), cheaper and SIGNIFICANTLY lighter than most guns used in this type of scenario.

If you were to disrupt the 'sniping industry', this would be a gun that does it. It's way more effective than the overhyped and unpractical .50 cal rifle, a weapon most often left behind (and in the hands of an enemy) if a unit needs to flee.

PS. This company is based in Austin, TX.

Why?

An interesting question that has a very long answer, but I'll try to be brief.

As a starting point, I was raised to think guns are bad. And psychologically I am fearful of even low tech firearms. Whether the two are related is unknown, however the phobia is real.

This goes beyond a phobia of encountering them personally - I am fearful for the results weapons bring upon humanity. And think that the time and energy spent on creating instruments of destruction would be better spent elsewhere.

I understand this is marketed as a hunting rifle. I eat meat. I understand some people like to hunt. Yet I am fearful of the repercussions of technology like this being used outside of the realm of hunting things like deer - for example, being used to hunt things like humans.

I am also fearful of this because it showed up at CES. It costs $17k. Its hooked up to an iPad. I know this specific model is not rigged to fire without manual operation. But someone with enough knowledge to hack something like this, but not build one from scratch, can do nasty things. So in 10 or 15 years, when the price point is down, and remote servos and triggers are off the shelf toys for the iPad8, this thing becomes a toy sentry.

I have a vivid imagination too, and some of it is dystopian future stuff. So that probably explains a lot.

Now I have a question for you: Does this scare you? And if not, then why?

Thanks for taking the time to respond. No, it doesn't scare me.

Guns in general don't scare me, because I see them as tools that generally have a lot more positive effect than negative effect. There will always be bad people who would do others harm, whether with guns or with something else.

If guns didn't exist in America, the next crazy person who wants to go out in a blaze of ignominy will just drive his car into a crowd, or make homemade explosives, or something else. Guns give the good guys a fighting chance, leveling the playing field. And by "good guy" here I mean both the unassuming guy who carries a concealed handgun every day (me, for example) as well as the 90-pound girl who protects herself from a home invasion. (To say nothing of the whole defense-against-tyranny thing.)

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox about all that. This gun in particular doesn't scare me because there are already far more practical and cheaper ways to do bad things. If you want to throw servos and a camera on a rifle, you can do that today. It doesnt need to be something that compensates for wind speed, and you won't use a bolt-action rifle if your goal is to kill a bunch of people remotely. Or you just build a bomb or something, like I said above.

... and logic like this is why I'm glad I live in Europe. Please examine recent events in your country to see how ridiculous your opinions are.

Repeating a post from a recent gun control thread, you're actually doing noticeably worse than the US:

From Wikipedia, school shootings in Europe in this century, last two numbers are killed and wounded:

  R., Georg, 18, Sep. 17 2009, Germany, 0, 10-15
  Kretschmer, Tim, 17, March 11, 2009, Germany, 15, 9-13
  De Gelder, Kim, 20, Jan. 16/23,, 2009, Belgium, 4, 12
  Saari, Matti Juhani, 22, Sep. 23, 2008, Finland, 10, 1-3
  Auvinen, Pekka-Eric, 18, Nov. 7, 2007, Jokela, Finland, 8, 1
  Bosse, Bastian, 18, Nov. 20, 2006, Germany, 0, 22
  Steinhäuser, Robert, 19, April 26, 2002, Germany, 16, 1

Other spree shootings in Europe in this century:

  Merah, Mohammed, 23,  March 11–22, 2012, Toulouse & Montauban, France, 7, 8
  Amrani, Nordine, 33,  Dec. 13, 2011, Liège, Belgium, 6, 123 (he also used grenades)
  Breivik, Anders Behring, 32, July 22, 2011, Norway, 75, 242 (a bomb killed 8)
  van der Vlis, Tristan, 24, April 9, 2011, Netherlands, 6, 17
  Radmacher, Sabine, 41, Sep. 19, 2010, Germany, 3, 18 (arson was also used)
  Bird, Derrick, 52, June 2, 2010, United Kingdom, 12, 11
  Sacco, Angelo Secondo, 54, June 28, 2005, Italy, 3, 9
  Antonello, Mauro, 40,  Oct. 15, 2002, Italy, 7
  Durn, Richard, 33,  March 27, 2002, France, 8, 19
  Selamet, Ozan, 42,  Jan. 18, 2002, Belgium, 6 (2 strangled)
  Roux-Durrafourt, Jean-Pierre, 44,  Oct. 29, 2001, France, 4, 7
  Leibacher, Friedrich, 57, Sep. 27, 2001, Switzerland, 14, 18
  Kaya, Hakan, 24,  Dec. 22, 2000, Germany, 6

Well you're certainly snotty enough to be European. Which thing I said, in particular, do you disagree with?

It is unclear if you are working with this assumption or not, but I don't think the rifle can be fired from the iPad/iPhone, it's just a spotters tool.

(I could be wrong though.)

Because instead of spending research money into getting cheaper and more accessible healthcare, food and housing it is used to kill more efficiently, maybe?

Did you read the article? This isn't government funded. Does every private company that spends money on something other than healthcare/food/housing scare you?

Did you read my post? Did I say anything about government funds?

I'm talking about companies' priorities. So someone talks about social things and you assume that they are talking about big daddy government? There are plenty of companies that make profit AND also make research for the common good and not how to kill each other better.

I mentioned those things because they are the most obvious and possibly important... but there are more subjects like environment, education, mass transport, open governments, factory automation, communications... that could do with more research.

Also, not all the profit should be monetary. Who are you gonna charge that money when there is no people left that can spend it?

No "social profit" -> no people -> no business. Your clients should be your interest not your product.

Bottom line: An "effing" waste of resources!

Ok, just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. You thini private companies should only do things that are directly humanitarian in impact. That's a bit of an uncommon position to take, and one I disagree with.

The profit motive is what drives private enterprise, and I have no problem with that. If something can be developed and marketed profitably, I think it's a stretch to call it a waste of resources.

Interesting piece of technology.

Sounds a lot like the XM-25 grenade launcher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM25_CDTE) but without the air burst grenades.

I wonder why this has not been developed by the military / government.

"I wonder why this has not been developed by the military / government."

They actually outlined this in the article. The reason pretty much boils down to the fact that gear specifically for the military has to adhere to whatever crazy shit the higher ups demand. This makes developing a proof of concept/ fully functioning, marketable device rather difficult as the costs begin to skyrocket.

These guys took the opposite route: develop the tech, bring it to market, then let the military get in on it if they like it.

A very large fraction of the small arms optics technology that the US military has been using in this century has followed exactly that part. Aimpoint, EOTech, maybe others, and of course conventional scopes.

Ha... I should stop scanning and actually read the articles on HN.

Then again, maybe not.

Warning, don't miss this line from the story:

"If it doesn’t upset you to see animals being hunted, the video at the end of the story gives you a good idea of how a PGF works in practice."

The video shows animals being shot!

If you're not a vegetarian, it's important to know where your food comes from :)

Shouldn't you visit a factory then? Food hardly comes from something so graceful as the forest.

I hunt. 90% of the red meat I consume comes from deer. I like to think that suddenly killing a wild deer with one bullet is more humane than factory farm conditions.

Where I grew up in WI, I had a neighbor whom his entire family were vegetarians unless he killed the animal himself.

That sounds like a wonderfully natural way to live. We eat a lot of chicken, and I'm trying to convince my wife to let me raise our own chickens when we have a house. So far she's not too keen on the idea.

I completely agree with you, and think it's awesome that you're able to. It's just important to remember that traditional hunting is not where most food comes from, nor could it be.

If you're an omnivore your meat probably comes from intensively farmed animals kept inside their entire life, before being beheaded on a conveyer belt or shot with a bolt gun. Not by a hunter sporting the latest rifle on the open plains.

The conditions in feeding operations are often fairly grim, but cattle operations are often open (i.e., the animals are confined outdoors) and they buy in lots of animals from breeders that feed from pasture for a year or so.

Basically, it would be more expensive to keep them inside for their entire life, so that doesn't happen.

Be a pedant all you wish, but please don't call this bolt-action rifle an assault rifle, and please don't assume that the majority of hunters use assault rifles.

Well, yeah. The point I am aiming at is, meat comes from the bodies of living beings and it's important for those of us who eat it (including me) to understand that fully.

I trust that my steak comes from a cow without actually having seen the cow get killed.

It's a fair point though: if you're going to end a life to eat, perhaps it's fair that you see how it dies. Should slaughterhouses have clear walls? Probably yes.

I think of those poor little bacteria that my immune system is hunting down, or the carrot so mercilously ripped from its home.

Maybe the government should consider banning Linux. I know you guys hate this idea but if it can be used to make weapons ...

Does the military have similar technology?

They are working on better stuff : https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/bullet... - steerable laser-guided bullets will soon be common for calibers of 12.7 and above.

How could the answer possibly be no?

I was just surprised to first hear about this on a civilian application.

Cool toy. I'd love to take it out on the range for a few hundred rounds!

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