(Land) Future Combat Systems

[revan]

Da hat jemand wohl Quintus erhört.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://defensetech.org/2010/05/06/army-sending-precision-grenade-launcher-to-afghanistan/">http://defensetech.org/2010/05/06/army- ... ghanistan/</a><!-- m -->

Army Sending Precision Grenade Launcher to Afghanistan

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Aberdeen Test Center, firing the Army’s latest batch of small arms and observing a demonstration of that wicked looking thing above: the XM-25 weapons system.

Here’s the story I wrote for Military​.com about the new weapon:

ABERDEEN TEST CENTER, Md. — The Army is set to send its high-tech “counter defilade” weapon to the war zone in the next few months, the first real-world deployment for the much-anticipated XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapon.

Officials announced May 5 that a group of Army Special Forces Soldiers will take the weapon with them to Afghanistan sometime this summer.

During live-fire demo here, Soldiers shot the Heckler & Koch-made XM-25’s high-explosive rounds through the window of a simulated building, showering “enemy” mannequins inside with lethal metal fragments.

Afghanistan veterans who fired the weapon for the first time this week predicted it would be a “game changing” weapon, a gun that can engage Taliban insurgents using distant ridge-tops, thick mud walls and tree lines as cover.

“It brings, right now, organic to the squad, the capability to defeat targets that we’re seeing everyday in Afghanistan — targets that we can’t currently hit,” said Col. Doug Tamilio, project manager for Soldier weapons with the Army’s Program Executive Office Soldier. “It will save Soldiers’ lives, because now they can take out those targets.”

While labeled a grenade launcher, the XM-25 is much more than that, Army officials say. It’s a precision direct, and indirect, fire weapon system that combines an array of sophisticated sensors, lasers and optics with a microchip-embedded 25mm high explosive round.

Tamilio pointed to the example of the Taliban attack on Combat Outpost Keating last October in eastern Afghanistan where some 300 Taliban insurgents swarmed a remote American base, killing eight Soldiers and wounding 22. The XM-25’s long-range, precision fire could have tipped the firefight in the Army’s favor, he said, because Soldiers could have targeted insurgents firing down on the base from distant ridgelines with high explosive rounds.

Firefights in Afghanistan take place at much greater ranges than in Iraq, typically beyond 300 meters. At that range, even skilled marksmen are hard-pressed to hit a fleeting target ducking behind cover — a bullet is only lethal if it hits the head or vital organs, which equates to about a six-inch-wide zone from the forehead to the groin, Tamilio said.

With the XM-25, Soldiers don’t have to actually hit that vital area to dispatch the enemy, they only have to aim the launcher’s air burst fragmentation warhead nearby. The warhead’s blast is equivalent to a hand grenade.
The enormous firepower advantage is obvious — Soldiers don’t have to get within throwing distance, they can drop the 25mm rounds directly into an enemy’s lap from up to 700 meters away, officials say.

Read more: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://defensetech.org/2010/05/06/army-sending-precision-grenade-launcher-to-afghanistan/#ixzz0nDl9tXY2">http://defensetech.org/2010/05/06/army- ... z0nDl9tXY2</a><!-- m -->
.........

Das XM25 ist in wesentlichen eine abgespeckte Variante des OSCWs nur eben ohne Kinetische Waffe.