I worked in weapons development for the Marine Corps, so I saw it in all of its many evolutions - from a "combo" weapon with one 20mm 5-shot system mated to a 5.56mm rifle system, to a 20mm only, then the 25mm beast. It was always unhandy, heavy, chunky, and had a whiz-bang, battery-powered $25,000 computing gun sight that set the time on the projectile fuze by estimating the number of times the round would rotate until it got to the target's range.
Sounded great on paper - and to the civilians/rear area pogues. but in action it was a pig and the round's very expensive per shot cost was upwards of $100 per round. The 25mm round has itty-bitty frags, so chances are you'd just annoy your target and not kill him after your long exposure to his fire while your computing gunsight was getting his range.
Combat weapons need to have direct input by actual combat veterans, not be designed by JSSAP weeny civilians or weapons vendors seeking to make bucks.
There is a museum at Ft. Benning that houses a collection of these failed products of this development process: they'll undoubtedly want one of these to add to their collection.
That’s why the dragonfire mortar system is far better. A single soldier can lase a target and within 18 seconds a mortar is on its way raining death from above. Whoever came up with that one is a genius.
Have a happy new year Sir.
Primary feature was the distance-set detonation of a 25mm frag round.
Rumor is an early demo had a high ranking officer test fire the weapon.
The ranged detonation worked as set.
The range was set to one meter.
Speaking of museums at Benning, any idea if we’re any closer to getting the tanks formerly at the Patton Museum on display?
“failed products of this development process”
That’s the very nature of Research and Development.
Roughly...
90% of ideas entering Research don’t get to Development.
90% of products entering Development don’t get into production and are not commercially introduced.
90% of products entering the commercial market do not succeed.
Yet you never stop your R&D pipeline.
Another over designed and much too complicated device whose only real objective is to make more money.
How about an RPG? They seem to work really well.