XM25 'Super Rifle' -- The Pentagon's Latest Toy That Won't Do Anything to Avoid Disaster in Afghanis

[unhappycamper]

XM25 'Super Rifle' -- The Pentagon's Latest Toy That Won't Do Anything to Avoid Disaster in Afghanistan
AlterNet / By Gary Brecher

December 18, 2010 | If you didn’t know better, you’d get all excited reading about the Army’s new shoulder-fired cannon, the XM-25. It’s being hyped as a “game-changing” weapon that will literally blow the Taliban out of their hiding places and turn the tide in Afghanistan.

The XM25 is the kind of weapon a kid likes to dream about. It’s basically a “smart,” user-friendly shoulder-fired grenade launcher. It shoots 25mm fragmentation grenades that explode at a pre-set distance. And you don’t need to be a math prof to calculate the distance; the weapon talks to itself, the laser sight basically telling the round when it has to explode.

So suppose I’m a soldier trying to deal with a sniper firing from behind a window in an Iraqi city, or popping up from behind some adobe wall, irrigation ditch or boulder in Afghanistan. In that situation you could blast away all day with a pure line-of-sight weapon like a typical automatic rifle, and you’d just make a lot of dust without hitting anybody.

What you need in a situation like that—and it’s a very common situation in war, especially urban or mountain war, and we’re fighting both at the moment—is a weapon that can kill an enemy who’s behind cover. If we were fighting in a wood-frame battlefield, like say an American suburb, you wouldn’t need to worry about this so much, because American walls and doors are very thin and most modern rifle rounds will go right through them. But Iraqi and Afghan houses are built of thick mud or concrete. They make pretty good cover for a sniper.

So instead of trying to shoot through the wall, you want to get an air burst of some kind through the window, or over the boulder or whatever it is the enemy’s behind. There are all kinds of ways to do that, and most of them involve lobbing an explosive round over the wall. Armies have been doing this for centuries. A catapult is designed to handle an enemy behind a wall, by lobbing its load over the wall into the enemy town. A siege mortar is designed to lob a shell over a fort’s walls into the enemy’s ranks. A hand grenade can be lobbed the same way at short range, and for longer range you could use the U.S. Army’s standard grenade launcher, the M203.



unhappycamper comment: And the best part is the XM-25 costs only $30,000 a pop!

[Gman]

1. The Mexican drug cartels will have it soon

[n2doc]

2. Great for killing innocent civilians hiding behind walls, too!

:sarcasm:

[soryang]

3. I read elsewhere it was $35,000 each

Of course, the price depends on the production run negotiated for. They should call the price, $29,999.98 so Americans think they are getting a bargain.

How does this defend against IEDs?

Wait till shipments of them disappear, are stolen, or are given to Afghan forces.

[Sonoman]

4. Of course, the target will remain stationary.

No lateral movement or any of that smart-ass stuff.

"Hey, Ahmed, let's just stay still and see if that thing really works."

Man....

Sonoman

[alfredo]

5. What is the range of the shrapnel?

[Sonoman]

7. See #6

That was supposed to be my response to you, but I screwed it up.

Sonoman

[alfredo]

8. A wounded soldier is more of a burden than a dead soldier.

Was this designed to wound?

[Sonoman]

12. Good one.

A little infection goes a long way.

I think some Geneva Convention (does that one still exist?) should be applied.

21st Century mustard gas.

Think blindness, deafness, blood poisoning.

I wonder what that HE shell (the round) is composed of.

Depleted uranium?

Lead?

Copper?

Poison, for sure.

Good question. Probably needs its own thread.

Sonoman

[alfredo]

16. It seems that the weapon is designed to hit a more or less

stationary target. If the round doesn't kill him its going to cramp his style until the knock out blow can be dealt.

[Confusious]

17. Sorry, the geneva conventions aren't going to help you

The 5.56 NATO round is designed to break apart in the body to do more damage. It's been around 50 years. This a grenade, which has been around longer. The 5.56 is worse then a bit of shrapnel.

It's just metal and and explosive. Not a conspiracy.

[Edweird]

15. That's cold war pitched battle theory. A wounded fanatic can keep shooting at you.

A wounded fanatic can set off IED's. A wounded fanatic can booby trap themselves. A wounded fanatic can kill you, and will if he has the opportunity. A dead one cannot.

[alfredo]

18. True, but I don't think they want to let him go with just

a wound. They know how close they have to come to get a kill.

[Statistical]

10. 2 meter kill, 5 meter wound, 10 meter minimum safe distance. n/t

[alfredo]

20. The biggest benefit of that round will be forcing the enemy to change

Their tactics.

[Sonoman]

6. That round is slightly less than 1"diameter.

At any distance, the concentration of shrapnel is going to be pretty light. I'll bet at ten metres there would be only shallow flesh wounds.

But, then again, I have never been around one of those rifles and could just as well be talking out of my ass.

I still think I am right. I have spent way too much time around shit that explodes.

Sonoman

[Statistical]

9. The official kill radius is 2 meters and wound radius is 5 meters.

Minimum safe distance is 10 meters.

[Sonoman]

13. I wonder what the composition of the shell (exploding projectile) is.

DU?

Lead?

Copper?

WP?

I wonder if this thing is intended to wound every bit as much as kill.

Thanks for the info, I had the 10m pretty much pegged.

Sonoman

[Statistical]

14. Yeah not sure but it is replacing the 40mm grenade with one that has a 37% smaller diameter.

The smaller diameter is partially made up by longer length. Still to keep similar lethality profile they have to have some extra "bad" stuff in there. Or maybe it is like GE slogan. "Better killing through better engineering".

[Petrus Romanus]

11. We're not losing for lack of tactical advantage,

as nifty as this gun may be.

[midnight armadillo]

19. bingo

There won't be any magic weapons to turn the tide.

[mudplanet]

21. This is so much like Star Wars: the little furry critters with no technology

are kicking the shit out of the guys with all of the technology and none of the heart.

Here's to someone giving the Afghans some stingers so that the assholes flying mach three jets and launching rockets at wedding parties get their just deserts.