US Army Unveils 3D-Printed Grenade Launcher Called RAMBO (ibtimes.co.uk)

New submitter drunkdrone quotes a report from International Business Times: The U.S. Military has a new firearm in its itinerary: Meet RAMBO, the 3D printed grenade launcher that could revolutionize the way soldiers are equipped for battle. RAMBO, or the Rapid Additively Manufactured Ballistics Ordnance to give it its proper name, is based on the U.S. Army's M203 underslung grenade launcher for firearms including the M16 and M4A1 carbine. But RAMBO is unique in that all of its parts save for the springs and fasteners have been produced by 3D printing -- and that includes the grenades themselves. The breech-loaded grenade launcher consists of 50 individual parts, the majority of which were developed through the additive manufacturing process. Additive manufacturing is a form of 3D printing whereby layers of material, commonly photopolymer resin, are printed on top of each other to create a 3D object. During testing, RAMBO successfully fired 15 shots without showing any sign of deterioration. The ammunition itself was also 3D printed, based on the M781 40mm training round. U.S. Army researchers selected this particular round because it doesn't require any explosive propellants, the use of which are have not been proved safe with 3D printed objects.

Comments

Every military man's worst nightmare

[Chas]

Some kill-crazy sonofabitch off the chain and looking for body count.

How does one PROJECT this sort of thing without actually getting lost in it?

In essence, making the other dumb sonofabitch crap themselves for their country and not want to actually fight and die?

Scary naming conventions.

Re:Every military man's worst nightmare

[Shoten]

Some kill-crazy sonofabitch off the chain and looking for body count.

How does one PROJECT this sort of thing without actually getting lost in it?

In essence, making the other dumb sonofabitch crap themselves for their country and not want to actually fight and die?

Scary naming conventions.

I don't know that I'd assign government-wide significance to this. At most, it was a small handful of people who gave it the name...it's not like the name went before Congress for ratification, after all. And as far as the "violence" aspect...for fuck's sake, it's a grenade launcher. It's a pretty violent device to begin with. :)

I think of it a bit more humorously, like this:

Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for, Agent Ward?
        Grant Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
        Hill: And what does that mean to you?
        Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell out "shield."

nobody should be allowed to use

[_Shorty-dammit]

Nobody should be allowed to use acronyms anymore. Heh. (Whoops on the AC post. Don't know why I wasn't logged in...)

Portable turrets

[backslashdot]

How come portable turrets aren't a thing for the military? I mean, when you have some cover say behind a wall, rooftop, or in a building who wants to be facing the enemy face to face if you can mount ur weapon on a turret and control, aim, and fire from your iPhone, Nintendo Switch, or Xbox controller? It doesn't even have to be on a robot, something the size of a portable tripod oughta be good enough.
I feel like there are tons of companies that would be able to make them cheap in sufficient volume.

Re:Portable turrets

[Maxo-Texas]

That's actually an interesting idea.

Re:Portable turrets

[Anonymous Coward]

It could also use a spring mechanism to fire the entire shell.
That's 65% more bullet per bullet.

Re:Portable turrets

[michelcolman]

And they can give them gentle female voices that say "Hello!" before they start to shoot!

Re:Portable turrets

[JaredOfEuropa]

Cheap? This is the military.

Also the thing would have to be rugged, and fairly sophisticated. Aiming using a controller is going to be slow and crappy, especially on a moving target. You'd need to add multiple cameras and perhaps a VR helmet to make this effective. Guy peeping out a window has instant 90 ish degree situational awareness and can bring his gun to bear on any target in a fraction of a second. A simple turret isn't going to come close.

Re:Portable turrets

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Aiming using a controller is going to be slow and crappy, especially on a moving target. You'd need to add multiple cameras and perhaps a VR helmet to make this effective.

Silly Star Wars misconceptions...people wouldn't be aiming manually, they'd be using computer/machine vision, and at best direct the system towards which detected targets to shoot at.

Re:Portable turrets

[CrimsonAvenger]

Also the thing would have to be rugged,

So true. There is NOTHING a soldier can't break....

Re:Portable turrets

[Baron_Yam]

Actually, a few heavy duty servos driven by a ruggedized laptop taking input from a camera can do a pretty good job of movement / face detection and can aim faster and more accurately than a human.

The problem is lugging them around and setting them up (and the not insignificant issue of Friend-Or-Foe detection...) Ultimately you have a lot more flexibility just handing a rifle to a human... which is why real military sentry guns are for major fixed installations like the Korean border.

Re:Portable turrets

[MightyYar]

They are a thing, as other posters have pointed out. I think you probably are underestimating the weight and bulk of this thing:
1. It needs to be heavy enough (or have anchor points) to resist the kick of the rifle.
2. It needs to be rugged enough to operate at least once after being exposed to the combat environment (impacts, dirt, water, etc)
3. The servos need to be strong enough to precisely orient a bulky rifle plus ammo. An m16 is around 4kg loaded with 20 rounds. Compare that to the roughly 1kg weight of a DSLR camera, and consider how large the gimbals they sell for those are.
4. Optics. You'd need a high-quality optics, calibrated to align with the rifle. If the optics were good enough and the viewing conditions optimal enough, you might be able to depend on the soldier to correct for bad aim, but either way you are talking more weight for optics and precise alignment of the firearm. The optics needs to be kept clean.
5. Power - a battery that either needs to be lugged around and/or charged periodically.

In short, a soldier can only carry, say, 40kg including all their body armor and such. If you offer them 10kg for this contrivance or the same weight in ammo or grenades, I suspect they will not opt for the rifle gimbal.

Re:Portable turrets

[coastwalker]

Take a look at YouTube. The Syrians and Iraqis take vehicles like Toyota Landcruisers and just weld a ton of metal sheet on them that will stop a bullet and hey presto a mobile minigun/machine gun. You must be stupid or too old to use the internet.

Re:Portable turrets

[gman003]

Remote-controlled turrets have recently become a trendy upgrade for military vehicles - the M1's TUSK system (Tank Urban Survival Kit) includes a remote-controlled 12.7mm machine gun, to allow it to be operated by the crew without exposing themselves.

Autonomous turrets are deployed along the Korean DMZ, and are equipped with a 40mm grenade launcher and a 5.56mm machine gun. They are claimed to be configured to require human authorization to fire, but are widely suspected to have fully-autonomous capabilities.

However, none of these are man-portable, for the simple reason that any system able to aim a decently powerful firearm is going to be fairly heavy. Even a light rifle will be 3kg+ with ammo, and recoil will be a problem without more mass (either for a recoil-damping system, or just to dissipate the force). Not to mention that it will be slower to aim (point-and-shoot is a lot easier than looking through a camera and pressing buttons, and that cover is rarely perfect - the soldier will be at risk anyways. Setting up some tripod-mounted remote-control gun sounds like an invitation to throw grenades at you.

Re: Portable turrets

[wasteoid]

I think you were looking for "I see you" and "Are you still there?"

https://youtu.be/r_imBPDKN_M

Re:Portable turrets

[DiEx-15]

And they can give them gentle female voices that say "Hello!" before they start to shoot!

...or "Dispensing product".

Re:Portable turrets

[Coren22]

Of course they exist...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:nobody should be allowed to use

[Anonymous Coward]

I christen thee: NSBATUAA

don't think this is a good idea

[LostInTaiwan]

Technology cuts both ways. I will sleep better at night if I know the advance killing equipments all require billions of R&D and billions more in manufacturing supply chain/infrastructure, rather than something that can be 3d printed in a cave. Of course, if you're the person in a cave with a 3d printer, this is probably an uplifting news. . . .

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[klingens]

It's an inevitable idea.
Also: this 3d printer itself needs a big logistics chain. Not only the printer itself which you can probably buy in 10 years from AliExpress COD Shenzen, but the things like the resins, stable power source, etc.
And they haven't made anything that goes boom yet either, cause a 3d printer is not a good chemical laboratory. Even the propellant is lacking. What good is a grenade that doesn't go boom?
Shooting training grenades isn't very scary.

Just like producing a normal rifle or other firearm once upon a time was high-tech precision manufacturing, making black powder needed lots of bird shit and caused regular explosions in the factory (more high tech), is now something hobbyists can do. So improving technology will making other stuff reachable by amateurs, in this case, grenades.

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[Zorpheus]

It's much cheaper to build simple weapons with conventional tools than to 3d print them. The 3d printed version must have some special properties to be worthwile.

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[DarkOx]

That is the problem with all this technology though isn't it? Whenever our knowledge of chemistry and physics advances we tend to weaponize it first. Than we find the civilian applications and the tech trickles out. Once its out its often not all that hard to re-weaponize it.

Think of all the commercial space business today. None would exists without standing on work down for the V2 rocket program. The heavy lifting, pun intended, was done by militarizes for killing people. Now there is a lot of access. Could Elon must go crazy one day and say with a hand full in inner circle people have one of those things come crashing down on top of the pentagon maybe packed with lithium :-)? I don't know the answer to that but it does not seem impossible.

Similarly could just about any state actor and perhaps some large organized crime groups like the cartels or ISIS arrange to capture nuclear material from the medical industry and build a dirty bomb, at least on a small scale? I think the answer is probably yes.

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[careysub]

Yeah, and that special property is that it is "just" a rapid prototype, revealed in the second sentence of TFA.

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[jordanjay29]

Even the space race was all about missile capacity. When Sputnik was launched, the US realized Russia had the ability to put a nuclear warhead down anywhere in the US. Up until the 50s, their tactic had been long-range bombers, but that was scaled back significantly (and ICMBs emphasized) once the space age began. The manned Mercury program was an evolution of this, launching on a converted ICBM rocket for Mercury 1 and 2. We likely would never have put a man on the moon without the military leading the way on ICBM technology, along with a host of other technologies.

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[Zorpheus]

Yeah, 3d printing is perfect for rapid prototyping. So why worry about it if it is just for that? Conventional mass production is faster and cheaper.

Re:don't think this is a good idea

[Zorpheus]

3d printing can have other advantages too, for example it can create very lightweight parts with a mesh structure, or other structures that are impossible to make out of one part conventionally. It can also be worthwhile for very complex parts, which would have to be made out of many parts otherwise.

gg

[JeffreyBPetersen]

Someone in the army's been playing too much SC2: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wik...

The U.S. government is violent.

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. government is, by some measures, the most violent in the world. The violence makes money for all the contractors and sub-contractors, and makes the average citizen much poorer: How War Made The Bush Family Rich

Re:The U.S. government is violent.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

And this cost cutting plays into this how?

I'm just waiting for the day of 3D printed heat seeking missiles with 49 cents of Radio Shack electronics and open source guidance code. The future looks fun :(

Re:The U.S. government is violent.

[kimvette]

Good luck with that. Radio Trash abandoned their core market in the '90s and has since gone bankrupt. Twice.

Already exists

[tomhath]

Check out the Davey Crockett portable nuclear weapon launcher. Not sure I'd want to be the guy using that weapon.

Re:Already exists

[DarkOx]

Yea that seems like it could go really badly for the operators if the winds are blowing the wrong way. Sounds like this thing would have produced quite a bit of fallout. Even though you probably wont get direct effects from the initial detonation, Its not hard to imagine some pretty hazardous dust blowing back on your position from where this thing lands a couple miles away a short time later. Better make sure the target is down wind.

Re:Already exists

[Chrontius]

Dialed to maximum yield and using the smaller of the two recoilless rifles, the maximum range of the weapon was inside the minimum safe range for the nuke. You were encouraged to trigger it remotely, from next to a bunker (that you could dive into quickly, and planned on abandoning as soon as the shockwave had passed twice), or on the back of a Jeep for some serious shoot-n-scoot action.

Ths type of additive manufacturing is expensive

[blind biker]

The equipment needed for this kind of additive manufacturing is on the order of 300.000 -1.000.000 USD. Furthermore, it is only viable for special parts that cannot be easily manufactured by traditional techniques, e.g. turbine blades and such. Grenade shells abso-fucking-lutely would be cheaper made by traditional metalworking. I would say a traditionally fabricated mortar shell is about 500 times cheaper than additively manufactured.

Re:Ths type of additive manufacturing is expensive

[careysub]

Reading the very first (short) paragraph of the TFA reveals that printing is only being used for rapid prototyping. They are not going to be manufacturing deployed weapons this way.

Re:Ths type of additive manufacturing is expensive

[bongey]

Don't know about the training shells, they are basically big paint balls, with bright orange powder. Also there is supply issue at times, when preparing for a deployment there aren't enough training rounds to go around for all branches.

Inquiring minds want to know

[stevez67]

Did they print pictures of naked servicewomen on the weapon as decoration?

Not so new of an idea

[Registered Coward v2]

The US military has been working with 3D printing for quite some time, at least since the early 2000's. The were doing additive printing using metal to make thins such as vehicle replacement parts. One one was printed it was then machined to the required tolerances an used; the printed parts were as, if not more, durable than the original. One of the uses was to reduce the supply chain by forward deploying the printing capability with instructions rather than having to procure, ship and stock replacements at various locations; or having a unit wait a few days while one was sent from the US. In addition, rarely need parts ould not need to be procured and stocked. A ship could carry one as well greatly reducing the time needed to procure a spare. If instructions weren't already available a lab in the US could create and send them.

Re:Not so new of an idea

[TWX]

Trouble with this approach is it requires a lot of steps in the field, and requires a lot of time in the field. It moves the production line closer to enemy action to destroy it, and if they really do have to form the rough shape in a 3d print process then machine it, that's presumably a lot of space and a lot of time being committed in a vulnerable position, and is also presumably much more dependent on electricity and functional computers that a conventional machine shop.

We can transport just about anything anywhere in the world in 24 hours, and we have the logistics to do that fairly cheaply already. For most parts it simply makes sense to centrally store them or to establish caches in safe locations, then transport them on-demand or else to cache small quantities in forward positions and to refill those caches as the parts are used.

Alternatively, other forms of machining are less reliant on electricity, especially when the materials worked are thin enough for manual process like various bending and cutting processes, and there are various welding processes that don't require electricity or else require very little electricity. Obviously electricity can serve as a wonderful labor-saving technology, but in a forward-deployed situation, if parts are to be produced locally it may make more sense to use these kinds of techniques where unreliable electrical power or battle damage might not destroy the ability to service vehicles and other machinery.

The place where I do like the technique you mention is in space exploration. It is hideously expensive to send materials up to orbit, so the ability to send bulk raw materials that get turned into products on-demand makes much more sense. I would expect that the process would first be used for plastics but could be expanded to other materials if the size of a space-based installation called for them. You'd probably still have a degree of a traditional machine shop though, simply because of the vast and varied techniques that could be applied to metal stock.

Re:Not so new of an idea

[del_diablo]

> It moves the production line closer to enemy action to destroy it,
Please read up on how warfare works. There is The Front, The Road to the Front, The Border, and usually miles away from all that: Where vehicles refuel.
Why on would anybody have a 3D printer on front, instead of just having one in a supply area?
Also: I don't think you understand just how much Logistics a 3D printer removes, if it can print ANY reasonably replaceable part.
Instead of a of a forward supply depot with random parts that will never get used, there is a smaller depot of materials. And if there is demand: A even smaller cache of pre printed parts, to avoid waiting for printing.

>We can transport just about anything anywhere in the world in 24 hours
No.
Package arrives for mail: Will be shipped in next 12-16 hours. Repeat for every single relay.
So army base -> county mail system -> overseas shipping location -> sea/air travel -> arrival on right continent -> and a few more chains of relay
I expect minimum time for that to be several days, if not a week.
If its a priority thing, thats still hours to get shipping going, shipping overseas quickly take half a day, and more is taken to get it on location. It will take over 24 hours unless you start risking air drops in field.

Re:Not so new of an idea

[Registered Coward v2]

Trouble with this approach is it requires a lot of steps in the field, and requires a lot of time in the field. It moves the production line closer to enemy action to destroy it, and if they really do have to form the rough shape in a 3d print process then machine it, that's presumably a lot of space and a lot of time being committed in a vulnerable position, and is also presumably much more dependent on electricity and functional computers that a conventional machine shop.

You make some good points but they would not necessarily forward deploy them beyond a secure base and ship parts from there. Granted, shipping from a logistic base is an option, and our logistics capability is pretty amazing, especially if cost is not a concern. I see this as more of a stop gap whne you can't get priority but need something' or if spares aren't available.

What is this, a website for idiots?

[DontBeAMoran]

Additive manufacturing is a form of 3D printing whereby layers of material, commonly photopolymer resin, are printed on top of each other to create a 3D object.

First of all, this is Slashdot. I don't think you need to define what additive manufacturing is.

Second, photopolymer resin is not common. The most common 3D printers use fused deposition modeling, not stereolithography.

3D-Printed TOY Grenade Launcher

[Hognoxious]

"During testing, RAMBO successfully fired 15 shots without showing any sign of deterioration. The ammunition itself was also 3D printed, based on the M781 40mm training round. U.S. Army researchers selected this particular round because it doesn't require any explosive propellants the use of which are have not been proved safe with 3D printed objects. "

So the headline should read: US Army Unveils 3D-Printed Toy Grenade Launcher Called IOAFTR

Re:3D-Printed TOY Grenade Launcher

[bongey]

There is still a .38 round in the printed shell, it still has explosion for the propellant. Note practice round shells are much lighter , they don't have nearly as much kick as an HE round.(former US Infantry). https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sy...

Re:Yeah good taste

[K. S. Kyosuke]

who represents the worst things about the military

By that you mean inadequate mental health care for vets? Yeah, that would be a fitting description.

Priorities

[roman_mir]

It is interesting to see though 2 stories on /. almost side by side: Russians 3d print a house. Americans 3d print a grenade launcher. Just saying...

Re:Why the US army? For on-the-fly weapon printing

[MightyYar]

To get funding for the research.

I suppose if you needed to make an argument for this sort of thing, imagine a cargo container sent to the field that could 3d print weapons as needed rather than waiting for supplies to ship from a far-away depot. You just keep raw materials common to all weapons flowing to the battle front instead of worrying about x number of guns and x number of launchers. Even if the stuff isn't as good or as cheap as traditionally-manufactured weapons, at least it's there when you need it.

Re:Yeah good taste

[DarkOx]

I work with a lot of veterans and I have a number of active duty friends, in various services. I can tell you exactly none of them would look to Rambo as role model for being a good soldier. Its also true that they are committed to defending this country, they have to be face death; so yes they enjoy a bit flag waving and they occasional phallic weapons system display. Finally names like this are fun, and they bring some levity to what otherwise would probably some hard stuff to carrier around mentally. I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact I think its a good thing for the rest of society.

We need to remember the reason you have a military is to kill people and break things. Its what they do at their core. Sometimes that is the only way to deal with people who don't like us and seek to cause us harm. Which is not say they can't be effective at delivering food stuffs and building sanitation systems when the situation calls for that but they might not actually be the best tool for that job. A chisel might work as a flat head screw driver but its not safe for the operator, not good the chisel, and has lots of potential to damage the surrounding work. We need to remember what the military is for and let that inform how we direct resources to it and where we deploy it for what tasks. Naming a grenade launcher something that clearly indicates what its for anti-personnel isn't really so bad.

Re:nobody should be allowed to use

[careysub]

Another proponent of NSBATUAA!

Not proven safe

[fyngyrz]

From TFS:

explosive propellants, the use of which are have not been proved safe with 3D printed objects.

Editing, the use of which are have not been proved safe with Slashdot Summaries.

FTFTFE

Acronyms and the Govt

[DrRiAdGeOrN]

Maria Hill: What does S.H.I.E.L.D. stand for? Agent Ward: Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division Maria Hill: What does that mean to you? Agent Ward: It means someone really wanted our initials to spell S.H.I.E.L.D.