LAS VEGAS, NEV.—In what’s becoming a yearly tradition for Ars, we met up with Austin-based TrackingPoint at CES to see what was new in the world of “Precision Guided Firearms”—the term the company uses to refer to its Linux-powered rifles. Last year, TrackingPoint had just taken the wraps off of its AR-15 PGF (which we got to shoot a few months later), and this year we got to take a peek at a new prototype weapon that can accurately put rounds on targets up to a mile away—targets that can be moving up to 30 miles per hour.

Dubbed the “Mile Maker,” the prototype was described by TrackingPoint representative Anson Gordon as “mostly” representative of the final product. The weapon at least for now is built around an enormous, enormously heavy, custom-milled steel barrel, which fires what TrackingPoint is calling “338TP”—a round somewhat similar to .338 Lapua Magnum but with some customized attributes. The company decided to continue on with their own cartridges for the longer-range rifle instead of moving up to a bigger round (like .50 BMG) because of the superior ballistics of the .338 bullet over the bigger .50 round.

Lee Hutchinson



Lee Hutchinson









Previously the longest range TrackingPoint’s weapons could accurately hit was about 1,200 yards with the company’s XM1 bolt-action rifle; the “Mile Maker” adds 600 effective yards onto the range of the XM1 by using different rounds, a longer barrel, and most importantly, updated software in the computerized tracking scope.

Aside from the “Mile Maker,” TrackingPoint also announced that it will be expanding its weapons’ audio and visual capabilities—rather than streaming videos directly over local Wi-Fi or recording and uploading things after the fact to YouTube or Facebook, TrackingPoint firearms will gain the ability to live-stream the scope’s picture to remote users using TrackingPoint’s smartphone app. Later in 2015, the company will be shifting its lineup somewhat, removing all of the XS-class weapons from its catalog and replacing them with two, new lighter-frame options. The two, new bolt-action options will be chambered in .308 and .300 Winchester Magnum and will use the smaller scope from TrackingPoint’s AR platform. Finally, the company will also begin selling a smaller “varmint gun” chambered in .260 Remington.

The entry-level ARs will still cost $7,495, as will the new .260 Remington weapon; pricing for the other new rifles hasn’t yet been settled. From a sales perspective, Gordon reiterated that TrackingPoint is still essentially selling every weapon that it has the capability to make, and that their numbers remain strong through 2015.

The final version of the big “Mile Maker” weapon is expected some time this year, and it’s expected to cost—brace yourselves—north of $40,000. Even at that price, TrackingPoint is confident that sales will be brisk.