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To: chuckles
I'm an old .45 ACP guy and love the M1A. However, while I agree with you I've got to point out the effectiveness of precision guided munitions. We've all seen what they can do from an air launched platform. Now we're using them in artillery (Excalibur XM-982).

I'm stretching here but...this probably won't be the gold standard of Infantry fielded precision guided weapon systems, it is a ‘bridging’ weapon system. Paradigms should always be shifting to cutting edge strategies, tactics and equipment. To do otherwise is to be caught off guard with the next Blitzkrieg tactic or panther tank. Sometimes ya get bit and the idea doesn't work so bad that ya hafta throw the whole thing away. Sometimes it works enough that you spend money refining it. Rarely is it a smash hit right from introduction...IMHO.

79 posted on 05/27/2009 12:40:42 PM PDT by griffin (Love Jesus, No Fear!)
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To: griffin

PGMs suck. Wars are won with sledgehammers, not scalpels. There is a time and place for the scalpel on the battlefield I suppose but the sledgehammer should remain the primary weapon with which we destroy our enemies because nothing says “unconditional surrender” louder than wave after wave of US bombers loaded with tons of ordinance flying unopposed over enemy cities.


84 posted on 05/27/2009 1:02:19 PM PDT by RC one
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To: griffin
Yeah, I understand the usefulness of guided munitions, But the cost for the average soldier is prohibitive. If I'm not mistaken, we now have 12guage shells that do approximately the same things that this new weapon does, but on a little more primitive scale. I don't think you can tell the shell to go 100 meters and then blow up. It may have been more of a contact explosion. The 12ga shell is probably $15-$20 apiece, but even that would be a specialized occasion to need that.

If the old arguments that made the .223 the basic round hold true, then this new gun will be something some corporal will call for to be delivered to some firefight to dislodge a couple of bad guys. Why not a few grenades? how about a rocket? maybe even a warthog or helo attack? The ammo and the price of the gun probably would pay for any one of these already proven methods of terminating the problem. Unless it could be the "basic" weapon for a ground pounder, I just look at it as a curious gadget. Maybe after a few years the prices of these things will decrease and make it possible. Then we will have to compare apples to apples( and hopefully go back to the .308):<). A .308 will go through many of the walls that this weapon is designed to defeat. And I have seen a .50 dismantle stone walls to leave no where to hide for the enemy.

89 posted on 05/27/2009 3:03:36 PM PDT by chuckles
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