Back in January, the United States Army announced that it had procured six Tracking Point scopes for testing on their new .300 Winchester Magnum XM2010 sniper rifle platform. Cool? Oh yeah. Worthwhile? Hmmm…..
Kit Up! reported that these Tracking Point-equipped XM2010s cost between $22,000 and $27,000 each, and that the Army is playing with a half-dozen of them. Somewhere. Doing something.
“While we don’t know the depth to which the system will be tested, we can showcase the platform it is on, including our working in-house version,” Tracking Point officials said. “Our networked tracking scope and guided trigger are integrated with the XM 2010 enhanced sniper rifle for military testing purposes.”
While it seems natural to at least experiment with computer-guided rifles for military use, Tracking Point’s PR guys have always maintained that their wunderscope isn’t meant for professional snipers. It was designed to help ordinary riflemen and hunters score first-shot hits – “ethical kills” – beyond normal shooting distances.
Our snipers are already awfully good at ringing the gong out to 1,000 meters and beyond. Is it a good idea to weigh them down with several more pounds of TP hardware dependent on batteries and software? Or is it smarter to equip every infantry platoon with a Tracking Point XM2010, giving it the organic capability to neutralize enemy snipers and RPGs out past the one-klick mark. Of course, they could wait for the technology to gain reliability and shed weight. But where’s the fun in that?