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US Army Unveils 'Revolutionary' $35,000 Rifle
rbrander writes "Don't call it a 'rifle,' call it the 'XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System' and get your $35,000 worth. Much more than a projector of high-speed lead, this device hurls small grenades that automatically detonate in mid-flight with 1-meter accuracy over nearly 800m. The vital field feature is the ability to explode 1m behind the wall you just lazed — the one with the enemy hiding behind it."
I'm also a little cautious on the Fox News reporting. It sounds too good to be true. The price sounds okay, an M16 can cost up to $28,000 and frankly I'd rather hit the taxpayers than cause more deaths. I fear that there may be more serious hidden costs like this little gem:
Once the trigger is pulled and the round leaves the barrel, a computer chip inside the projectile
Computer chips are cheap but if you're putting clip after clip of bullets out during an intense firefight, I'm going to guess that on that last clip or magazine you wished that you had opted for more 'dumb bullets' versus less chipped bullets. I guess the proposed scenario makes it sound like only select fighters will have this weapon in each unit.
A patrol encounters an enemy combatant in a walled Afghan village who fires an AK-47 intermittently from behind cover, exposing himself only for a brief second to fire.
Again, that's assuming that you have the correct wall, the combatant hasn't fallen back into another building waiting to ambush you on the inside and also hoping they're not housed with women and children, as I've heard is often the case.
Sounds like a really great and innovative improvement for select uses but I really gotta question the 'game-changer' assertion. If I woke up tomorrow and found out that deployment of this weapon allowed the precise termination of all combatants with no civilian casualties and the war was basically over, I'd be happy for being wrong.
My work here is dung.
Who else saw this on the Discovery channel about a Decade ago? I bet most everyone.
I've been using these for years to rape snipers and campers. One of the most versatile weapons in the game.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
how much is the cost of the ammo?
"Once the trigger is pulled and the round leaves the barrel, a computer chip inside the projectile communicates exactly how far it has traveled"
That doesn't sound cheap at all.
noun
the protection of a position, vehicle, or troops against enemy observation or gunfire.
I remember the assault class in Battlefield 2142, having a rocket addon that essentially did the same thing. You scoped the cover your enemy was hiding behind to set the distance, and then add a meter or how far you need to it via the scroll wheel on the mouse, then launch the rockets which air burst at the set distance. Terrible devastating in game, I can imagine it's as or more effective in the real world.
The cool factor for this is very high, but so is the cost. I'm not sure it's okay that a solider could be out there wielding a rifle that is worth more than his yearly salary.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Folks if we have this in our hands now doesn't it beg the question of "how long will it be before the enemy has it too?"? In which case it becomes a genuine game changer and perhaps we won't need them any more! Or perhaps we simply demolish each other and go up in smoke together. How does our military decide which soldiers will carry and use these weapons? How will they debrief them when their tour of duty is over? I see a ton of questions for each remarkable comment they have made about how much more effective our troops will be in the field.
I see that there's chips in the exploding projectiles. That's very awesome, that basically allows you to more or less fire into a specific area without needing full (or even partial) visibility of the target.
Which raises my concern - shootin' off silicon explodey is awesome on paper and in Halo, but now we're talking deadly force on a target that we may not have completely identified. I can see where this helps our soldiers avoid being shot at, but I can also see where this decrease in need of visual confirmation of the target could result in higher civilian casualties.
Regardless... I'd love to fire one. Heheheheheheheheheh.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
If they have zero chance against us on the battle field, they'll shift the focus of their attacks. Namely, more terrorist attacks. IEDs, roadside bombs and attacks on American civilians.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Seriously dudes... "gun".
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
That's a big fucking gun!
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
Tell that to the Taliban.
Peace through excessive violence.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Slashdot is hardly the only news source with Slashvertisements - Fox is big on them as well, and the military-industrial complex just loves that kind of thing. And some high-tech weapons are actually effective, while some fail badly in real environments; back during Vietnam, US Army rifles would jam a lot, while AK47s that were dirt-cheap to make usually didn't, even though they weren't as accurate.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They have spent so much on this weapon and yet their standard issue rifle is horrible compared to more modern (hell even three decades ago) weapons.
Sure, sometimes you can kill all your enemies without making far more of them in the process; that occasionally even works when two governments are fighting each other. But if people are fighting you because they're pissed off that you're invading their country and attacking their culture and you killed their cousin, killing them is just going to get more people with dead cousins pissed off at you.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I wonder how many AK-47s one can buy for the price of one of these toys?
so you're firing on a target you can't see...I'd bet money that in many cases the target won't even be properly identified...somebody will be fired upon...see somebody "gophering" at a window...and promptly kill an innocent family in a house...we'll hear about it from wikileaks in 2014...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_K11
Wouldn't this weapon be more useful against an occupying force, than for them? That is, wouldn't urban "insurgents" have more and faster access to mostly-enclosed structures, while the occupiers would tend more to ad-hoc cover?
I suspect that we may regret introducing this, once it's copied and sold cheap by certain other nations which will go unnamed... Maybe it'll give us the advantage in a burned-out dust bowl like Afghanistan, but it would hurt us somewhere like Iraq.
Please correct me, I'm just a cynical jerk, not a tactician.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Even assuming that you aren't a loon, if we didn't invade Afghanistan, the CIA would not bring in that revenue, pushing down your savings number.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I'm not an expert on military stuff, but I have been interested in this and I have read articles about it over the years.
This came out of research that started many years ago, the OICW program.
The original vision was that every soldier might get a fancy grenade launcher like this as his/her primary weapon. But you don't dare use a grenade if an enemy is at very close range (perhaps attacking with something as simple as a pointed stick), so the OICW was supposed to have a close-range, defensive capacity: a "kinetic energy" weapon, i.e., bullets. The result was a heavy, complex, expensive weapon that didn't make anyone happy.
But I guess the research to produce the fancy grenade launcher paid off, and here is the result.
I was always troubled by the 25mm projectile size. Can a 25mm projectile contain enough explosives to produce the desired effect when it air-bursts? I guess so, if they are deploying it.
For general issue, it will continue to be the M16 family for the foreseeable future. I have read the occasional article about the military starting to wish it had a rifle of intermediate calibre between the 5.56mm of the M16 and the 7.62mm used before the M16. In desert engagements, ranges might be farther than the M16 can comfortably handle; in jungle terrain, foliage can sometimes deflect the 5.56 bullet. But nobody wants to try to generally issue the 7.62 mm again, as it has much more recoil than the 5.56, and it would be a pain to introduce some sort of new ammo.
But now this new, fancy grenade launcher looks like it shall fill in the gap: it shoots a relatively massive projectile at up to 500 metres point effect, and up to 1000 meters area effect (source: Wikipedia). The ammo will be much more expensive than 5.56 ammo, and it will need batteries and special training besides; but if it really works as promised, it should be very cost-effective. (Even if you spent many dollars in ammo on attacking the enemy, if it decisively stops the attack from the enemy before he inflicts casualties, you have come out ahead.)
As I said, I am no kind of expert and I welcome corrections if I said anything wrong here.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Military unveils world's ugliest gun, which hopes to deter people from buying them.
wall explode around you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGS-17
With 30 rounds of linked ammunition Soviet-designed automatic grenade launcher has range of 1700 m.
Not as sexy as the US version but wall, village and enemy combatants cannot hide.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
According to TFA, the US Army is going to shell out over $400,000,000 on these guns. Each shell (?) has a computer chip; they aren't pennies apiece.
Meanwhile, we keep hearing about an overwhelming debt and how we'll need to cut social security benefits, cut energy R&D, cut mass transit investments, cut unemployment benefits. But we've got enough money to provide a tax cut for those making $250,000+, and we've got enough money for yet another BFG.
I love my country despite it's terrible collective decision making skills.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
We've been taking out enemies in cover with TOW missiles. They cost $180,000 each, and you need to fire two to make sure a building is clear. This weapon costs 1/5 the price of a SINGLE TOW missile, is reusable and man portable. This means no need for an attack helicopter ($3000 or more per HOUR to FLY) AT4 Rocket is $1500 each use, and causes too much damage in urban fighting. This is the field mortar evolved, and it will change combat forever.
Since when do you need to cut the budget in half to accomplish anything?
Getting rid of "less than half" of what the government spends would be more than enough to balance the budget. Balancing the budget isn't the same as not spending anything.
If it has a rifled barrel, and it's a "small arm" then it's a rifle.
Maybe it's a grenade launching rifle?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Sometimes I think that the US is midway through an attempt to shoot the moon in the category of international hatred.
...the pulse rifle from Aliens: http://bit.ly/dIzPZj
You're aware that Mr Gatling, a dentist by trade, designed the crank machine gun in the hope that it would end wars and killing... how'd that work out?
The cost of keeping men in theater is so great that if this (or any) weapon reduced the length of the conflict by 1%, it will likely have paid for itself. The real issue is whether the conflict can be solved by killing people.
Likewise, the cost of recruiting, training, and maintaining a soldier is so large that if this weapon saves some lives and prevents some injuries, it will pay for itself.
As far as how "revolutionary" the system is, well, I can't say for sure because I'm not using one. I'm guessing that this weapon will be issued to the guy in the team who would normally be carrying the M16/M4 with the M203 on it. The M203 is reasonably effective for firing on enemies behind cover. When I had the chance to fire one in Basic Training, I could very reliably put a round through a window out to about 100 meters. Landing a round a couple meters behind a berm or small wall was a bit more tricky but definitely doable. The sighting system on the XM25, the much flatter trajectory, and the air-burst feature should make these kinds of shots much much easier. It will also allow a soldier to shoot from the prone position, which isn't so easy with the M203. The important thing about this weapon is the range. Being about to put those grenade rounds out to 800 meters is a big advance over 150M with the M203.
I haven't shot or handled one of these weapons, but I can imagine firing one. What I imagine is something similar to the feeling of firing a M2 or Mk19-- my feeling was 'Holy shit! There's nowhere to hide..." That's what I can imagine with this weapon.
The projectile is traveling say 1000 feet per second ( let's say that the target is 500m away starting behind a long stone wall ), then the projectile explodes. To kill someone it just passed, it will have to fire lots of large fragments backward and down ( or backward and sideways - if person is standing around the corner of a building ) at at least 1000-2000 feet / second to be lethal.
The physics on this is tricky. To do this, you need to meet the "for every action, an opposite and equal reaction" law. This means something of equal mass will fly forward at ~ 3,000 ft/sec ( this is wasted material not being aimed at anything except unsuspecting persons in the distance ) . In the end, you are talking about a round with what? maybe 20 fragments ( to increase the odds of hitting something ) and each fragment will have to 1) fly fast enough to penetrate and ideally cause hydrostatic shock and 2) be heavy enough to do damage. If the rounds are too big and heavy, a single gunner will have trouble firing the weapon ( bruising on the shoulder ) and won't be able to carry many rounds because of the weight.
For close range targets - 100m, the round is traveling at perhaps 2000 feet per second. Even if this thing blows up over someone's head, it seem most of the blast is going to continue forward, not towards the person behind the wall. Perhaps they hope the concussion wave will be strong enough to be lethal. A very high percentage of the metal fragments should blow forward due to the already high velocity of the round.
Keep in mind, this round is spinning, so the blast will go in all directions. It is not possible to tell the bullet to fire downwards when over the target.
note: a 22 cal bullet fires at bout 800-1200 feet per second. An M15, the standard round for the USMC, fires at about 2,700 to 3,500 feet per second and can have a range out to about 800 meters.
Brilliant. Maybe we can find other people to surrender to, also. Think of the savings!
btw Pookemon you spelt "dyslexia" wrong in your sig.
=)
"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
So you have a way to instantly kill somebody you can't see who hid behind a wall in a gunfight. Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Oh, I know! I understand that innocent people also tend to duck behind cover when a firefight breaks out. I know that's what I would do. So now we have yet another way of killing people we can't even see. I mean, I know that this is on balance a good thing; it will save lives, speed up gun fights, etc. But unless the rules of engagement for this weapon are pretty strict and strictly followed, a bunch of innocent people will be killed by it.
Compare smart bombs to regular ones. A standard 1000lb bomb really isn't all the expensive. Adding a guidance package costs more than the bomb. Well that isn't a very good deal... Until you look at what it takes in terms of unguided bombs. Back in the unguided days you talked about numbers of bombers to have a defined probability of killing a target. So if you wanted to hit an airfield or a factor or something it would be a case of "We need 4 bombers dropping a full load to have a 95% chance of killing the target." Never mind the collateral, often civilian, damage, that can get expensive. Now we talk in terms of targets per bomber. A single bomber, even a small one like an F-15, can be sent out ot destroy multiple targets because one bomb per target is usually enough, maybe two.
Makes them real worthwhile in many cases.
Seems highly likely that firing grenades (not the most precise of ballistics) from afar at people hidden behind walls will lead to more innocent deaths.
Look-- I can understand the questioning of the physics behind a round moving 2000 feet per second exploding and killing people below it. It sounds like a difficult problem to solve. I'm certain that you're not the first person to wonder about this.
Still, this weapon has been in development for a long long time. Presumably, they've tested the ammunition at some point in the 10+ years that they've been developing it. During that testing, I'm sure they figured out how to make it kill things despite the physical challenges.
Well speaking for those of us non-trolls all i can say is: this thing is fucking rad. As far as price goes, have you seen the army budget? Drop in the bucket my friends.
Ah, now I see. All that spending is justified because it's a pride issue. We can't go around doing things that might in the least way be construed as "surrender".
For the water balloon version from Walmart!
Unfortunately, the true revolutionary rifle is the one that can be reliably and inexpensively mass produced by the millions, the one that won't jam, and the one that can easily be understood, fixed, and used by even a small child.
...but it ain't no Zorg ZF-1
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If you study guns, you'll notice that the most reliable ones fire larger, heavier, rounds and themselves are larger and heavier. Good reasons for this:
1) The tolerances don't have to be as tight. When things are large, there's more room for play. A bit of dirt doesn't matter nearly so much.
2) More recoil force and/or gas. When there's more pushing back against the action, it cycles better. Also you can load up heavier springs, to push it back harder, again making it more reliable.
That's what the M2 is still one of the most reliable guns out there. Shoots a big heavy round and is built with some room for error in it.
Wonderful, but you have to consider carried weight. Troops have to slug a lot around, gun and ammo weight matters. While it might sound nice to say "Just give them bigger guns with bigger ammo!" that isn't necessarily so practical.
Accuracy also comes in to play. Part of the AK's reliability comes form the action. If you've ever watched it in slow motion it positively slams shut, even flexing and vibrating a little. Well enough but at what cost? The cost is accuracy. It is not a good gun at range. "Spray and pray," are very much the operative words. The M4/M16, however, are much better. They aren't quite rifle accurate, but they aren't bad.
It is a tradeoff, and it is easy to pull the "grass is greener" type thing, look at the other gun and say "Well clearly that is better!" However if you used that, well then you might have a different opinion.
Communication between the projectile and the gun is the key and possibly the weakest link. Given the range, it is using radio waves. Why can't I turn on a cheap EMI jammer? Shouldn't that break the whole thing
Just not for the military. The 5.56 part of the weapon was cool too. It was spun off and developed separately in to the H&K XM8. The miltiary really seemed to like it overall. A former roommate got to shoot one and said it was awesome, almost stable enough to shoot one handed. R. Lee Emery tried one on his show and loved it. However for some reason they canceled it.
"The ... system, which costs up to $35,000 per unit, is so sophisticated that soldiers are proficient users literally within minutes."
It's an iPhone for blowing shit up!
In fact, if you eliminated all DOD spending - took it to zero - you'd simply cut the deficit in half, leaving it at $700 billion (higher than any time in the past, save the last two deficits).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
For that kind of money, plus what we spend on each soldier's armor, training, etc., I think we are approaching a point where it will be less costly, in money and American soldiers' lives, to simply develop and field battle-droids. Also, remember the dark side: any technology that is developed and fielded by our military is in the hands of our government, and may be used at some point by them to oppress the people. Think it can't happen?
until kids in afpak have a choice between A. Starvation and B. Taliban school, there isn't going to be any end to the fighting. if anything good came from wikileaks, it is that ambassador to Pakistan who has been screaming at the guys in washington about this.
I know some of the guys who tested and rejected the SCAR, they said it was just too easy to break. I expect this to get to units who can afford it and be rejected as unreliable, or to be treated more like a mortar or heavy MG. I would be shocked to see this rifle get much use.
Getting rid of less than half of the defense budget would be sufficient to balance the budget, at least going on the numbers shown here: Robert J. Samuelson - Our burgeoning budget and the politics of avoidance.
It'd be good to get some up to date numbers, but if it is tracking the numbers there it's certainly something that I would expect true deficit hawks would be looking at.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
To my mind, this capability is in fact far more important than the 'shoot behind walls' factor. Honestly, for $35,000 you can carry around something capable of blowing UP the wall and the people behind it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I've found it amusing how much French there is in the military shibboleth/jargon. No one bothered renaming defilade as "freedom cover".
The English language is full of French words, its not really something related to the military. The Normans (as in Normandy France) conquered and ruled England for quite a while.
What kind of moron thinks we should 100% eliminate our military spending? I'd go for a 25% cut, myself, but the neo-cons and their ilk will never allow it.
We will never solve our budget problems because there are too many sacred cows. Military spending, medicaid, medicare, welfare, etc...
If we had sane leaders and were willing to do what was needed across the board we could solve our budget problem in a decade.
Yeah, that's totally it. It's a pride issue! We should totally get some flowers and put them in our rifles, and and all military spending, it's just small penis compensation that the US maintains a strong military, amirite?
Idiots on both sides of this issue make me fucking sick. Sure, we can and should cut our military spending but we still need to maintain the world's strongest fighting force if we want to maintain stability.
All I see lately is goverment money wasted on weapons and movie industry. So if they are not trying to kill someone they are trying to abolish file sharing. 2 biggest mistakes of this year.
With an accelerometer in the round, it could easily direct a charge downward even if spinning.
It could also have some mechanism to substantially reduce forward motion directly before impact, say a small initial charge directed forward or even just some kind of air brake.
The rounds would not be cheap but if they really worked well it would be worth it, and it's not like you're going to use one unless you are pretty sure you need it.
As others have noted, they are deploying them so they probably work to some extent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When the first 'modern' (ish) armies were coming into play, France was the premier ground-based ass-kicker of the world. (Primarily due to the work of a Corsican, but there you have it.)
I'd wager the English would disagree with your thesis. :-) More importantly French words are found throughout English speaking militaries because the English language in general has French words throughout it. This is because the French, Normans specifically, conquered England. It has nothing to do with Napoleon, it predates him by centuries.
They pretty much set the standard in terms of tactics, unit organization, et cetera - and thus, other militaries followed suit.
Actually that would be the Romans. Napoleon adapted Roman methods for modern weaponry. Although he did relax things with respect to discipline. Disciplinary action in the Roman military generally involved killing the offender or drawing lots and killing 1 out of 10 of the offender's unit, the later being the original of word "decimation".
They're not going to introduce confusion on the field of battle by moving away from terms that have been established for centuries
A lot of terminology has been changed between WWII and today, even a Vietnam vet would have trouble understanding at times. We can't even seem to keep the phonetic alphabet the same without tweaking it for political or morale reasons, ex. Baker/Bravo/Battle Company.
And getting a jack of all trades (5.56 + 20mm weak grenade) master of none or something designed properly for the job (50% stronger grenade). And where do you think that "extra" money goes? The US should only buy US weapons.
Isn't every new clever killing device fueling a never ending arms race with the rest of the world? You could argue that others would develop this stuff if we didn't, but isn't it also true that reverse engineering U.S. designs takes them to places they otherwise wouldn't have gone? And isn't this made easier as more and more of the technology gets pushed into software? I get the feeling this new gun will only help our troops for a decade or two, at which point they will find similar guns pointed right back at them. You can't stop innovation, but you can stop funding it.
You're technically right if you count it one way, way wrong if you don't.
Talk about just the general fund - Social security has its own tax, not part of the general fund at all. It's pretty self sustaining, at least until the 2030's. Same for medicare and unemployment comp. Some of these programs are projected to be in trouble, especially if money borrowed out of them in prior years isn't put back as promised, but they may or may not follow those projections - there's a lot of axes being ground there when people talk about 20 years out. Let's not count where these are properly funded by their own separate taxes, just if we have to use the descressionary budget for them.
Now, do you count the VA budget as civilian? Military retirement? How about foreign aid - do you count the aid that is earmarked only for purchasing military grade weapons systems and can't be used for civil improvements as civilan spending? Highways - that ought to be civilian, right? Now what about burying 2 inch thick steel plates under roads on US military bases where tanks maneuver a lot? (We can hide this in Dept. of Transportation funds, and even claim the road projects are to improve routes leading to isolated and poor communities - there's lots of isolated communities of trailer parks on the far sides of US mainland military bases). Black projects - why hide a top secret item in some part of the military budget when you can hide it all they way over in Health and Human Services? We finally have confirmation that the CIA directed parts of the national endowment for the arts budget to prove this has been going on, but we may never know about the majority of such cases.
Here's how it looks for the 2011 descressionary budget, which is still with all the black projects hidden, so if anything, its more one sided than this.
Military/Security: 895 Billion dollars - 63%
NonMilitary: 520 Billion - 37%
Or, we could count everything, in which case, we don't just throw SS and unemployment in, we add servicing the national debt, and then break out what part of the debt is from prior year military spending. This looks pretty similar. You can get pretty close to the military being less than half if you add only the non-military portion of the debt and add in
SS and such, but that is simply not an honest way to figure it.
Quick Source - try www.DeathandTaxesPoster.com
Who is John Cabal?
Want to carry lots of heavy rounds and have high mobility in an urban setting? It's almost 2011, where is my fucking POWERED ARMOR!?
Ok maybe they aren't as practical in the so called "real world" but the terrorists will be so shit scarred they'll give up immediately!
But... the future refused to change.
And how long (measured in months) until the Bad Guys(TM) have them too? Then what?
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
The TOW is fired from a helicopter or possible a IFV. While the structure the missile hits is obviously going to suffer damage as long as the helicopter of IFV isn't right next to another building when it fires the damage is going to be largely limited to the target. The AT-4 has to be fired by somebody in the middle of the urban environment, the back blast of the AT-4 is significant.
The standard AT-4 model has a roughly 300ft 90 backblast cone. Anyone inside this cone could be seriously hurt by debris from the baseplate debris and the force of the blast itself. Firing an AT-4 from a confined space (inside a building) can do significant damage to that building and people inside it. Here's a video of an AT-4 being fired. Watch the shock wave around the guy as the weapon fires and then imagine that inside a building. You'd do almost as much damage to yourself as to the poor bastard you shot the thing at. Here's another video not only explaining the problem but describing the CS (confined space) variant of the AT-4 meant to solve this problem.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
As long as this one takes out those with the AK-47s nearly every time?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
.$400 million is nothing. If it keeps US soldiers alive and healthy, it might even save costs in medical care over a lifetime. One of the biggest military expenses is people, active and retired.
Of course buying big screen televisions for the barracks in Camp Lejeune and not sending them to Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place would probably keep them even safer.
-- Terry
I saw this thing in Metal Gear Solid 4 two years ago. By unveil do they mean, "This has finally passed all testing and we'll likely put this in service but still use the X designation while we shake out the bugs?"
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
But "This is my XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, there are many like it but this one is mine" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Okay, they specified the range in the article as 2300 feet. Which is 700 meters, not 800.
Second of all, they don't specify if that's "effective range". Nor whether it's effective range for point or area targeting.
Maximum range of an M16 is 3600 meters.
Maximum effective range for point targets if 550 meters (1800 feet).
Maximum effective range for area targets is 800 meters (2624 feet).
For the uninitiated:
A point target is a target you can actually sight and shoot at. A person, object, etc.
An area target is usually beyond the effective ability of the shooter to accurately sight, but is still within the effective "kill" range of the weapon. The far side of a field, down a street, etc.
Now at the MER, if you're using iron sights, the target is smaller than the front post. A decent telescopic system can work wonders for sighting and accurate fire at this range though.
Now if the 2300 feet is the MER for point targets, that's impressive. If it's area-targeting, it's less so. Though the smart ammo does make up for that.
And yeah, it's not really a "rifle". While the ammunition may be delivered the same way, it's really a semi-automatic mini-grenade launcher. So even if you don't hit your target dead on with the projectile, you can still kill him when the projectile explodes.
Now the ability of the weapon system to "dial" the range out or back a meter is quite interesting. But I don't foresee this replacing the mainstay weapons systems in the TO&E. They'll probably be issued to squads rather than every individual. Kinda the way heavier weapon systems are.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Suffice it to say that war is no longer fair.
At least give the other guy a chance to know he's being shot at.
Wow, so it kills even more people? that's revolutionary! What about a really revolutionary weapon, that gets a banana inside a hungry person, all he just have to do is open his mouth "Fly over Ethiopia, "There's a guy that needs a banana." "Shooooooooooooom" the Stealth Banana Smart Fruit!" (Bill Hicks)
What's the DAM rating versus DPS? Does it require a certain Strength level, or Guns skill? Can I equip it on a companion?
A mortar will get behind a wall easily. Mortars are inexpensive, the rounds are inexpensive, and further they can have fins that could easily be computer controlled. Would have made a lot more sense to build a guided mortar system.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So when is the civilian version of this coming out? It seems that this weapon would be most effective at getting those damn kids off my lawn. Oh, but remember to shout, "Get off my lawn!" first, before shooting. It's more sporting to get them on the fly.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Can't wait to get my hands on this in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Gonna miss my trusty M203 and spewing n00b tubes all over the map, but gotta upgrade someday.
To something like, say, a "Bolter".
There is no -1 Disagree.
That's not the way of the Empire.
(out of those, military might be in the end necessary to maintain overconsumption)
One that hath name thou can not otter
You know, figuring out destabilizing practices and avoiding them might help, too...
One that hath name thou can not otter
This is something even Fox has reported on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clca6YtYvCI
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
Reading all the misinformation that is being spread in this thread is really hilarious. Things like: the caliber of the AK47 is smaller than that of the M16. Etc. It goes on and on. If you aren't going to go out and shoot them yourselves, people, at least pick up a book and learn a little. You never know when it might come in handy.
These soldiers look ridiculous with these helmet when their enemies are 2000 feet away.
The weapon should be able to change no just the tactics in fighting. It should also change
the helmets and boots, for example.
I know the US doesn't care about such things any more, but don't these violate the Hague Convention on "exploding bullets"?
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
There is a huge whole in the thinking of the military tactics around this. Supposing the quoted soldier is correct, and there is really no way to fight this weapon from cover, or flee from it. There is one further option they are overlooking: Hand to hand combat. If you deploy a unbeatable weapon at range against me, I will just try to engineer the fights to be at such short ranges that explosives are off the table. Is this going to make insurgents run, or use more IEDs and close quarters ambushes?
When in the history of war has a new weapon ended war with it's lethality?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
... Rifle grenades for a loooooong time and cover is still as important as ever. The important new features for the XM-25 are range (800m is double the range of a typical 40mm grenade launcher) and its airburst capability, sustained fire and relative ease of use. Using smaller grenades also means reduced damage, a desirable feature in CQB. However, there are and there will be countermeasures deployed: the device needs its laser rangefinder, so expect the use of particulate smoke to make ranging difficult. Like in all warfare conditions, the best defence is offence so if I expect my forces to go against XM-25 armed troops I'll have snipers deployed to take out soldiers carrying it - hopefully eliminating the weapon as well. It's a nice advantage to have but only the Nazi elite believed in miracle weapons to win the war, and watch where it has led them. Aggressive tactics and adaptability trump any technological wonder. The Russian campaign in WW2 should have taught us that, but I guess the iWar generation has taken over and will need some blood by the megagallon to understand it. I'd like to have one of those in my arsenal, but to believe one weapon will change the face of warfare is naive. Not even nukes did that.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I can't wait until every U.S. police department decides it "needs" these to "protect" the citizenry.
Is it like the inkjet scam? $35,000 for the rifle then $200 for each bullet...?
No sig today...
It was mentioned in the first post of the discussion. (Although I think the troll mod was unnecessarily harsh)
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
Nice. Now the USA troops can kill civilians much easier that are try to hid behind a wall. Like 864,531 in Iraq and 8,813 in Afghanistan. That's like a ratio of 1:317, American to Muslims (there was 8813 civilians killed in the 9/11 attacks). My sources was a quick Google search, and particular this My guess is if you Government get to a ratio of 1:500 then 9/11 was avenged enough. You still wonder why the Muslims hate the USA so much?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
This really should be said more often.
It's great to see governments devising ever better ways to kill people. Let's not forget that, of the two major wars the US is currently embroiled in, the Iraq one was started under several false pretenses (Irad had very little to do with Al Qaeda, and no WMDs), and the Afghanistan one is being waged against US-created foes, who are still in business mostly because the US drug policy gives them plenty of money-making opportunities.
Methinks what we need is brains and hearts, not guns.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I'm not sure - not that I know a lot about guns (or indeed anything) - in fact, I don't even remember the proper names of any of them, so I hope those more knowledgeable will fill in the empty spaces for me. However, I do remember seeing a documentary that among other things told about why guerrillas preferred the AK-47 (I looked that one up) over the advanced American super rifles: it is simple and robust. The American one tended to jam because of any dirt in the mechanism and was difficult to clean etc etc, whereas the Russian one kept working and was easy to take apart and clean.
The American rifle had impressive specs - superior precision, where the AK-47 would just spray bullets out in the general direction where it was pointed; but then that is more of less what you want anyway.
So this new super-duper rifle, will it actually perform to specification when you have dragged it through 10 miles of choking mud or sand?
I can't believe no one on Slashdot has played with the actual XM25 itself in a game that came out June 2008, 2.5 years ago. You can test its battlefield effectiveness there yourself, in a combat environment similar to what we're seeing today. And the plot takes place in 2014, which makes the fielding of this weapon in real life decently timely. And you guys call yourselves nerds.
http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_4_weapons#XM25
"War... war never changes."
In the end, seems to be quite unpopular view.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Col Lehner says the enemies options have become basically "flee or die". There's 2 problems with that. #1: the wall is probably part of a building; you can always go into another room. Or (as anyone who knows a US Marine will know) you can charge. Marines don't run from suppressing fire, they run toward it. That kind of tactic doesn't require training, it requires fanaticism. Tell me again what kind of people we're fighting?
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
Although I can see how this weapon would be very useful for taking out snipers behind cover, I cannot help but feel that more grenades in an urban environment is not a good thing. A girl from my school, Linda Norgrove was recently killed during a hostage situation in Afghanistan where US soldiers allegedly killed her with grenades in a botched rescue attempt. Although the solders claimed she was killed by a suicide vest an autopsy revealed she was killed by US army grenades and investigations into what actually happened are still under way.
At one point, you should ask yourselves why and how some illiterate peasants wealding 100$ Kalashnikovs (60yo tech mind you) can defeat the most expensive army in the known universe
You can't win if you don't have a clear military objective to achieve to proclaim victory.
The US should only buy US weapons.
This is why you end up with second rate weapons. When you protect your domestic industry completely, they don't have to match foreign manufacturers, so they don't. That doesn't just hurt your soldiers, it also hurts exports.
If foreign made weapons were on the table, in a genuine value-for-price contract, US weapons manufacturers would have to match the best in the world. That makes it easier to sell to the world.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
TOW missiles are also frequently mounted on Humvees
So what happens if the enemy manages to jam the communication between the gun and ammunition since they're talking over some sort of wireless connection or something?
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
The biggest criticism from the rest of the world levelled against the USA forces in Afghanistan is that they are killing far too many civilians. This is also a bad tactic as general Stanley McChrystal admitted last year they were creating more insurgents by their actions not fewer. He called it the hearts and minds offensive and implemented new tactics involving less use of indiscriminate weaponry (bombing) and closer contact combat. This new weapon is non discriminatory, who knows how many women and children might also be taking shelter behind the wall with the gunman. Not good, not good at all .....
This better be more reliable than the AK-47.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
This is my XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System. There are many like it, but this one is mine...
More opportunities for the American military to murder even more people around the world.
Nice to see the US still has it's priorities right[1]
[1] To help American readers, that's called irony.
Farewell to the 5 D's of Dodgeball: Dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge! Now you better run fast or have an emergency escape chute nearby...
A great summary of a lot of the problems the USA is facing."
Hmm....why do you say that?
I'd think if everyone had a mini-gun, it would sure mean a MORE polite society...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm absolutely certain, beyond a shadow of doubt, that *every single weapon ever deployed in a battle field will inflict civilian casualties* - every single one. As long as there is a decision based on incomplete data that is life or death for the person making the decision and it has to be made literally in a second or two it is going to happen.
In this particular case this weapon replaces weapons that have a VERY wide kill radius - namely larger explosive devices. I'm also certain that it will happen as you say and be reported at someplace like wikileaks (and maybe even there), however this misses the fact that it *reduced* the amount of civilian deaths. Indeed, wikileaks would never disclose the amount (nor could they if they wished as it isn't really a definable number) that were saved by this because they lived to close to an actual military target and were "collateral damage" - this number will *far exceed* the one you are worried about.
Weapons such as this are an attempt by our governments to reduce civilian casualties to one primarily cased by lack of information. The ability to harm precisely the people you intend to and no one else would be a MAJOR step forward in casualties - while still a tragedy any time it happens we are MUCH better off with today's guided explosives than we were in WWII where we had to flatten and entire city with thousands of bomb to get a single factory.
Argue about going to war, that is the root cause. Weapons such as this are *vital* if your aim is to reduce civilian casualties. Even with perfect killing devices that *only* kill those that the soldier intends to are going to incur civilian casualties. Deciding if it is a war that ought to be fought is where the argument needs to be, not if a weapon that increases the ability of the soldier to hit their target may be accidentally used against a civilian.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
The 7.62x51 was a dead design at birth. The Germans figured out in the late 30s that fielding a long-range, high powered rifle wasn't tactically effective. Aimed fire at a 1000 yards was a dream of the mid 19th century tacticians, the reality of effective combat was massed fire from automatic weapons. This was proven conclusively in WW I and the carnage of the Somme and other battles where thousands were wiped out by machine gun fire.
Automatic fire from heavy rifle rounds (8mm Mauser, 7.62x54R, 30.06 Springfield, 7.62x51) work well in heavy machine guns, but is impractical to field for individual soldiers due to the weight of the weapon, parts and ammunition. Almost all machine guns in that caliber are crew served.
What the Germans did was cut down the 8mm Mauser round and create the 8mm Kurz ("short") and then build what we now call the assualt rifle, the Sturmgewehr. The Russians were on the same track, and aside from the commie propaganda surrounding Kalashnikov, ultimately copied this for their own medium rifle round, the 7.62x39, and created the Kalashnikov (which still required Hugo Schmeisser to show them how to mass-produce).
With the medium rifle round, individual soldiers could produce massed automatic weapons fire, carry more rounds for the same weight in a smaller, lighter weapon.
The 7.62x51 was "born" because short-sighted Americans had a generally good experience with the Garand in WWII and figured they'd improve on this. What they ended up with was a rifle nearly twice as heavy as the AK-47, almost uncontrollable on full auto and carrying 10 less rounds in the magazine. Once the US started mixing it up with AK-wielding NVA in Viet Nam, the US rushed the closest thing they could find that compared into production, the M16.
Of course, this rush to service had all the attendant problems we can expect from a bureaucracy. The troops weren't trained to care for them, Colt didn't figure out the need to chrome the bore and chamber, and the guns initially performed poorly, although most believe that these things were fixed by about 1971.
This unfortunately legacy is what causes many to cling to the 7.62x51 and the M14. It's a great rifle (with a synthetic stock) if you are sniping, but its a terrible tactical disadvantage as a primary infantry weapon.
... and don't call it a "gun", either, or else you'll have to stand naked with your hand on your crotch repeatedly chanting "This is my XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
This is actually a pretty relevant point. PPR can be a point of inflection, esp. in larger conflicts.
How is this even a problem? I have not read of a SINGLE incident of a LEGAL owner of a minigun using it to kill people. Not to mention it is a FACT that someone who's willing to kill doesn't really give a crap if having the gun they are about to use is legal or not.
Snipers have had them for years, I know they were used in desert storm, nearly 20 years ago.
You know the bad guys are hiding behind a cinder block wall, you should into the wall, the bullet explodes shortly after it impacts (so its inside the wall when it explodes) and the other wide of the wall opens up like a massive shotgun blast killing everything behind it or against it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Gene Simmons had access to this technology and used it on Tom Selleck in 1985: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6Djog2B-c&t=1m10s
The bullet holds a timing chip inside and simply does a countdown from the instant it's fired.
Which means the gun communicates the distance to the bullet. How does it talk to each bullet one after the other? It would be sensible to do so by a physical connection to the casing while it's chambered. But perhaps there was a fear of passing a current through a live round so they did it wirelessly.
What if it's done wirelessly? Dude on the other side of the wall has a laptop and hacks your bluetooth. He then sets your bullet to pop 0m from the barrel. Ouch.
If it were possible someone could rig up a cheap device and spread them around, a sort of TV-B-Gone or rather Soldier-B-Gone.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I am heavy weapons guy. An this...is my weapon. She weighs one-hundred and fifty kilograms and fires two-hundred dollar custom tooled cartridges at ten-thousand rounds per minute. It costs four-hundred thousand dollars to fire this weapon...for twelve seconds.
[End Of Line]
Have you read "The Food of the Gods" by H.G. Wells?
What can be used for military purposes will be. Advantage to he who uses it first. Very depressing. Basically true.
At some point perhaps people will be making smart bullets in straw-hut villages using little microchip fabrication plants ala Bladerunner, but right now, the majority of bullets are made in incredibly low-tech ways. We figure (probably rightly) that a country which can afford to make these bullets has huge vested interests in not having a war with us. We can make it worth their while not to, and they have a lot to lose, too. No one who can afford these bullets in large numbers are a real war threat for us.
Besides, we're going to SELL these. We're a huge exporter of arms, or haven't you heard? We want to patent this and sell it before the Israelis do, or they'll make the money instead of us. Arms companies aren't just powerful in the US because they have ties to the military, they're powerful because they bring in those export dollars.
That said, this is a handy assassination tool. And even a poor country can afford ONE bullet. I wonder if the bullet would be damaged travelling through a window before it went off? If so, the world just got a lot more dangerous, particularly for the people who thought this was a good idea.
the last surviving part of the xm29 OICW project that was all the rage in military FPS games back in the late 90s.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
AK-74. 74. Seventy four. Not forty seven.
You're the third guy replying along these lines. God, people, learn to read, or at least check other comments first :(
And sly Afghans will defeat it with a Kalashnikov anyway. What a waste of taxpayer money.
It's a good thing the US hasn't deindustrialized itself and industrialized China at the behest of the Chicago School of economics or China might have the capability to field this weapon, in massive quantities, before the US!
But anyway, even if it could, by some incomprehensible miracle, ramp up industrial production of a known technology more rapidly than the US, China would never sell arms to the other side. They don't like money that much!
Seastead this.
Hey come on, we need to export something. Weapons and agriculture is about the only things we have left.
read it again
From TFA:
With this weapon system, we take away cover from [enemy targets] forever," Lehner told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "Tactics are going to have to be rewritten. The only thing we can see [enemies] being able to do is run away.
This advertisement could stand a bit of healthy skepticism. Right now, I can think of an easy way to defeat this weapon: use some kind of overhead cover. That's right, a simple roof covered with sand bags, or a bunker, would be enough.
The spokesperson for this company seems to lack a crucial sense of imagination.
It's called net-widening. They say it will save lots of money because new technology Y costs less than existing technology X, but really they just end up using X and Y.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
It wasn't funny because the French are cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
It was funny because our government is descending into inconsistent and self-effacing populism; an edifice of illusions. The actual facts, as you condescendingly point out, immediately put the lie to the mutual and polar-opposite hallucinations of France as seen by an American liberal versus a conservative.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
It's almost like Duke Nukem but there is an actual device that will probably get a few soldiers killed and a couple of billion tax payer dollars squandered trying to make it actually do what they say.
I've read what has been allowed to us public peons and I am not impressed. I love high tech, this is not it. It's too many things, it's too small of a projectile, it's too complicated as an all-in-wonder device.
There are far superior tools that have a proven record,
I suppose I'll have to actually document that when I have time.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Everytime i see the word "enemy", i think yet another life and countless other inextricably linked lives being destroyed. Talking about them, in these terms, is hard to digest. There are no winners... some are just more dead than others.
The ones that are less dead are the winners. Seriously, though, dehumanization is a big risk of combat, from what I understand. Not having been in a war myself, I can't say how avoidable or unavoidable it is -- it may not be something a soldier has a choice about if he wants to live -- so I am not prepared to criticize much, but it is probably not a good thing.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Violence is just a part of the solution. You fight small fires with water. You fight big ones with fire.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Then, the squad deploying this expensive weapon may be destroyed by a couple of ($5,000-$10,000) LCCMs!
http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/cruise.shtml
Its practical to spend up to $20,000 to destroy two $35,000 weapons ($70,000) and the trained squad using them.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
Sweet, now we have Boltguns! Can't wait till they roll out the Power Armor and Chain Swords!
Doesn't the AA-12 automatic shotgun already do the same thing with the right type of rounds? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atchisson_Assault_Shotgun#Cartridges
the CIA in that case would just be doing more south american and far east narcotics business. what's loony about what I wrote?, it's mainstream news and mainstream history