Posted on 11/28/2010 6:29:13 PM PST by Pan_Yan
Since the dawn of modern warfare, the best way to stay alive in the face of incoming fire has been to take cover behind a wall. But thanks to a game-changing "revolutionary" rifle, the U.S. Army has made that tactic dead on arrival. Now the enemy can run, but he can't hide.
After years of development, the U.S. Army has unleashed a new weapon in Afghanistan -- the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, a high-tech rifle that can be programmed so that its 25-mm. ammunition does not necessarily explode on impact. Instead, it can be set to detonate either in front of or behind a target, meaning it literally will go through a wall before it explodes and kills the enemy.
It also has a range of roughly 2,300 feet -- nearly the length of eight football fields -- making it possible to fire at targets well past the range of the rifles and carbines that most soldiers carry today.
Lt. Col. Christopher Lehner, project manager for the semi-automatic, shoulder-fired weapon system for the U.S. Army's Program Executive Office Soldier, said that the XM25's capability alone is such a "game-changer" that it'll lead to new ways of fighting on the battlefield, beginning this month in Afghanistan.
...
Lehner said the first XM25s were distributed to combat units in Afghanistan this month. The 12-pound, 29-inch system, which was designed by Minnesota's Alliant Techsystems, costs up to $35,000 per unit and, while highly sophisticated, is so easy to use that soldiers become proficient within minutes.
"That's how intuitively easy it is, even though it's high-tech," Lehner said. "All a soldier needs to know how to do is laze the target. It decimates anything within its lethal radius."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Thanks Pan_Yan. It’s better than the stuff I could find.
Yes it is, but they already could do that with the OICW, iirc.
You didn’t see my post 11
bah!
It’s the gun sights plus the ammo. the gun is ho hum.
I’ll take your word for it. I’m not a weapons expert (former submariner) by any stretch. I was reading articles about Afghanistan and this scrolled by. Hadn’t been posted so I put it up. I’ll let the experts hash out the pros and cons.
It's a 35K firecracker distributor - albeit, a fairly accurate one.
"Game changer"?? Yeah, if you don't want to kill your opponents, and that is the wrong kind of 'change' for a battlefield - kinda like Obama's change, all of it senseless and highly questionable.
A rugged, reliable method for programming the ammo is pretty damned impressive, too.
Ammo isn’t cheap, either.
Just the thing for your local SWAT team and those pesky wrong address raids.
Guess it'll be a special weapon, like a SAW or a sniper...
Look for it to come on a number of sniping variations from the Barrett to the M-14, to some of the AR systems. It will calculate total atmospheric conditions before the operator fires.
When will the surplus ammo start showing up at Cabelas?
Actually, if it’s the system I’m thinking about, the ammo can be “non-lethal.” But it can also be “lethal as H#ll.”
No sir that is just one type of ammo.
# Caliber: Low-velocity 25 x 40 mm grenade.
* Thermobaric
* Flechette
* Training
* High-explosive airbursting.
* Non-lethal
# Range: 500 m point, 1000 m area.
Which brings up an interesting question. I wonder how much 'humping up and down the hills' our forces do in Afghanistan? I know it's not flat like Iraq, where everyone seemed to be in Humvees all the time.
Great. Does it have a cell phone hooked up to it, so they can immediately call the lawyer JAG-offs to ask them if they are allowed to fire the G-d damned thing at the blessed, sacred mooselimb scumf-cks?? This war would be over 6 years ago if we were allowed to KILL THEM...
This is excellent. In the past US have to call in air strike, if this weapon is distributed to every squad, we could reduce time and cost to kill a well barricade enemy
Dunno... I almost had first-hand knowledge of the area - I volunteered for an assignment there, but wasn't selected. (skill set just a bit off from the requirements)
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