For once it seems the Army is actu­ally turn­ing fic­tion into science. 

After nearly a decade in the shad­ows — with bil­lions spent on ear­lier ver­sions long since aban­doned — the Army is mov­ing quickly to field a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new weapon to Joes a lot sooner than any­one had ever imagined. 

It’s a weapon that can take out a bad guy behind a wall, beyond a hill or below a trench, and do it more accu­rately and with less col­lat­eral dam­age than any­thing on the bat­tle­field today, offi­cials say. It’s called the XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, and by next month the ser­vice will have three pro­to­types of the precision-​​guided 25mm rifle ready for testing. 

“We’ve done a lot of test­ing with this, and what we’re see­ing is the esti­mated increase in effec­tive­ness is six times what we’d be get­ting with a 5.56mm car­bine or a grenade launcher,” said Rich Audette, Army Deputy Project Manager for Soldier weapons. 

“What we’re talk­ing about is a true ‘leap ahead’ in lethal­ity, here. This is a huge step,” Audette added dur­ing a phone inter­view with Military​.com from his office at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. 

Born of the much-​​maligned and highly-​​controversial Objective Individual Combat Weapon — a 1990s pro­gram that sought a “leap ahead” bat­tle rifle that com­bined a counter-​​defilade weapon with a car­bine — the XM25 only recently gained new momen­tum after the Army for­mal­ized a require­ment and released a con­tract in June for a series of test weapons. 

Current infantry weapons can shoot at or through an obsta­cle con­ceal­ing enemy threats, but the Army has been try­ing for years to come up with a weapon for engag­ing tar­gets behind bar­ri­ers with­out resort­ing to mor­tars, rock­ets or grenades — all of which risk greater col­lat­eral dam­age. After fits and starts using a 20mm rifle housed in a bulky, over­weight, com­pli­cated shell, tech­nol­ogy finally caught up to shave the XM25 from 21 pounds to a lit­tle more than 12 pounds. 

If the XM25 does what its devel­op­ers hope, it will be able to fire an air-​​bursting round at a tar­get from 16 meters away out to 600 meters with a highly accu­rate, 360-​​degree explo­sive radius. 

(more…)

I know you guys are prob­a­bly notic­ing that we’ve had a good amount of weapons con­tent on DT for the last few months.

Part of the rea­son is because after report­ing one gun story, you tend to get tid­bits of infor­ma­tion on another, then another from that, then another from that.

When I spoke with Rich Audette on the Army’s search for a new car­bine a cou­ple weeks ago, he men­tioned to me that the Army was ready to test shoot a new weapon that could rev­o­lu­tion­ize infantry com­bat as we know it (my words not his…but his were close).

I just wrapped up the story and put it to bed, and we’re going to post it tomor­row morn­ing at Military​.com, but I wanted to give you all a head’s up here.

Army to Test Air Burst Weapon for Joes

For once it seems the Army is actu­ally turn­ing fic­tion into science.

After nearly a decade in the shad­ows — with bil­lions spent on ear­lier ver­sions long since aban­doned — the Army is hurtling along to field a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new weapon to Joes a lot sooner than any­one had ever imagined.

It’s a weapon that can take out a bad guy behind a wall, beyond a hill or below a trench, more accu­rately and with less col­lat­eral dam­age than any­thing on the bat­tle­field today, offi­cials say. It’s called the XM25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, and by next month the ser­vice will have three pro­to­types of the precision-​​guided 25mm rifle ready for testing.

“We’ve done a lot of test­ing with this and what we’re see­ing is the esti­mated increase in effec­tive­ness is six times what we’d be get­ting with a 5.56mm car­bine or a grenade launcher,” said Rich Audette, Army Deputy Project Manager for Soldier weapons.

“What we’re talk­ing about is a true ‘leap ahead’ in lethal­ity, here. This is a huge step,” Audette added dur­ing a phone inter­view with Military​.com from his office at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey.

Born of the much-​​maligned and highly-​​controversial Objective Individual Combat Weapon — a 1990s pro­gram that sought a “leap ahead” bat­tle rifle that com­bined a counter-​​defilade weapon with a car­bine — the XM25 has only recently gained new momen­tum after the Army for­mal­ized a require­ment and released a con­tract in June for a series of test weapons. 

– Christian