Back in May, things were looking grim for Austin-based TrackingPoint. The company, which manufactures Linux-powered smart rifles capable of nailing moving targets more than a thousand yards away, had posted a notice on its website saying that it stopped taking new orders. Multiple news sites began publishing stories saying that TrackingPoint had laid off half of its employees and was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.

Then this past Tuesday, TrackingPoint emerged from what it calls a period of "restructuring" and is once again taking orders. TrackingPoint founder John McHale is now in the role of CEO, and former CEO John Lupher stepped in as vice president of engineering (a role similar to where he was back in 2013 when Ars first wrote about TrackingPoint). Another former CEO, Frank Bruno, will become a Chief Operating Officer.

"The new TrackingPoint is really a clean start for the company," McHale explained in a telephone interview with Ars on Wednesday. "We have invested $35 million in research and development, so that’s our core asset. And we’re relaunching, recapitalized, with financing from three large investors, including McHale Labs, which is my investment company." The re-launched TrackingPoint will continue to focus on both civilian and military sales, and the company will have four main products: a large bolt-action rifle chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum, and three AR-15 carbines, chambered in 5.56mm NATO, 7.62mm NATO, and .300 AAC Blackout.

McHale tells Ars that the company’s apparent collapse and near-insolvency was a result of growing too quickly without effective planning and controls. "In the end, we had a massive inventory issue," he said, elaborating that the company simply sank far too much capital into inventory and wound up with a glut of just about everything—from electronic components for the scope, to barrels and firearms, all the way down to screws.

"We had tremendous growth in 2014, and small companies oftentimes have growing pains where their systems and back-office systems and planning processes don’t keep up with growth," said McHale. "And that’s what happened to us—in particular, our material planning systems were not adequate."

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Now in the driver’s seat of the company he originally founded, McHale spoke confidently about TrackingPoint’s viability. The company, he said, was profitable at the end of 2014, and he expects that it will return to profitability in the near future. Going into the period of restructuring, it was unclear whether TrackingPoint would wind up in bankruptcy and liquidation or not; McHale credits patient suppliers and a patient bank with keeping the company in a state where it could resume selling product. The re-launched TrackingPoint continues to maintain its relationships with the same sets of suppliers as before, including Barnes Bullets, which manufactures the match-grade ammunition necessary for TrackingPoint’s rifles to function accurately.

McHale also refutes a lot of the media coverage about the shutdown. Although he did say that TrackingPoint had gone through significant staff cuts and would now operate with approximately 20 employees instead of its previous high of about 80, he characterized a lot of the media coverage of his allegedly tyrannical behavior as having "no credibility" and being the product of "incredible imagination."

"I'm sure some disgruntled employees kind of got with certain members of the press," he told Ars. "I think the evidence is that all the senior leaders I supposedly had a personality conflict with, we all still work together. So you can see there's really no credibility in their claims."

He continued: "One of the articles says that I walked in one day, tore [Frank Bruno's] name tag off his door, fired him, and called a company meeting and fired everybody else. Well, if Frank and John and I are still working together how could any of those things have ever happened? It's incredible imagination."

Hack attack

We closed with a quick discussion of security researcher Runa Sandvik’s Defcon disclosure of Wi-Fi vulnerabilities in TrackingPoint’s rifles. McHale acknowledged that the vulnerability was present, but he played down the real-world impact of the hole, noting that a hacker intent on connecting to a TrackingPoint rifle’s Wi-Fi network would need to be within 100 feet of the rifle and its owner.

"We question why a hacker with a laptop would follow around a red-blooded American carrying one of our guns," he said.

Still, a security hole is a security hole, and the demonstrated ability for an attacker to alter the weapon’s aim point is being addressed. "We’re giving our users the ability to change the password periodically," McHale explained, "just in case there’s a hacker hiding in the woods or in a hole, or behind a bush while they’re in the Serengeti."