Vanishing Point? TrackingPoint No Longer Accepts Orders…
Above image is a screen-shot from www.Tracking-Point.com.
TrackingPoint, the Texas-based maker of expensive “Precision-Guided Firearms” with laser target tagging, has announced that the company is no longer accepting orders due to “financial difficulty”. Here is Tracking Point’s official statement, as posted on its website:
“Due to financial difficulty TrackingPoint will no longer be accepting orders. Thank you to our customers and loyal followers for sharing in our vision.”
Expensive System Doesn’t Read the Wind
Why has TrackingPoint stumbled? Some speculate that TrackingPoint’s products are simply too expensive for the general sporting market. (A TrackingPoint AR10-type .308 rifle retails for $14,995, while a bolt-action .338 TP costs a whopping $49,995!) Additionally, though the TrackingPoint hardware incorporates sophisticated laser target designation technology, the shooter must still call the wind and enter wind values. If the shooter badly mid-judges wind speed or angle, he WILL miss his target at long range, even with all the advanced technology. For this reason, some analysts believed TrackingPoint promised more than it could deliver in the real world. Doubtless TrackingPoint was hoping to secure large, lucrative defense orders, but those have yet to materialize. The wind-calling issue, and concerns over battery life, have emerged as barriers to adoption by defense agencies.
This video shows how the TrackingPoint system works:
Surprise Development after Recent Positive Reports
Curiously, Tracking Point’s announcement that it will not accept new orders follows positive reports issued earlier this year. A February 24, 2015 PRNewswire post stated: “[Y]ear-on-year unit growth was 281% and year-on-year bookings dollars grew 107%. The company believes it is the fastest-growing gun company in the world.” In a February 2015 financial release, TrackingPoint reported “growing demand and interest in its Precision-Guided Firearms from the defense sector. Testing performed at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Yuma, Arizona proving grounds has shown that a typical Soldier performed significantly better than the military’s elite marksmen when using TrackingPoint’s Precision Guided Firearms.”
“We have made a very large investment in Research and Development over the last 3 years. Our core technology is now foundationally mature, putting us in a position to lower operating costs,” said Frank Bruno, who took over as TrackingPoint CEO this year.
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Tags: Frank Bruno, Laser, Precision Guided Firearms, Texas, TrackingPoint
“[Y]ear-on-year unit growth was 281% and year-on-year bookings dollars grew 107%. The company believes it is the fastest-growing gun company in the world.”
Percentages in this context don’t mean squat, and neither does public relations blather. Hoping to sell to the military and stick it to the taxpayer didn’t pay off this time. Just another outfit whos’ time will hopefully never come.
These “positive reports” are known as “forward-looking statements” … otherwise known as public relations BS. Always remember the old saw: “Buy the item, not the story.”
for $5oK, the unit should have doppler radar unit to read the wind:)
I never got the point of…Tracking Point. The “problems” that it purports to solve are all the easy ones in shooting that take a little bit of training and inexpensive equipment to overcome (trigger control, drop calculation, etc), while the truly challenging stuff–wind doping–is left unaddressed. It’s also hideous, likely fragile, and outrageously expensive. The product has always been more gimmick than substance, enough only to impress the mall ninjas. Good riddance.
The concept that the rifle’s high cost is so that it is capable of NOT necessarily firing exactly when the trigger is fully depressed (like every other rifle in the world) but rather when the system determines a moving target is reacquired, would be simply nerve racking to the shooter.