So, while we’re waiting around for the XM-25 to make it into the armory, why not just strap this bad boy onto your M4 and rip out the 40 mike-mike?
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i bought stock in this company back in 2006 and it kinda went downhill, but they have a great technology and have all the weapons and ammunition ready to go into production. Take a look at their Redback defense system, the robotic sentry turrent equipped with 4x4GL’s … thats 16 grenades per turrent . Go to to their website and check out their work on anti-rpg defenses. After future weapons showed them on Discovery, MetalStorm has yet to hit the main stream media again. WHY ?? A 3 shot grenade launcher bring a huge firepower advantage. Metal Storm is a great company, keep you eyes on them!
These guys seem to have had the right idea for a while, without knowing where to put that idea.
So many good uses to this tech, but we have still been left without a usable product.
I wonder why they cant get something to market that will usher in the rest of the tech on the basis of that success… it feels like a long time we have been talking about them, even before future weapons i was keeping a eye on what they were doing.
It is quite an experience to see fat bellied old men shooting ” Pseudo” macho weapons, while someone takes their picture.____This photo is another joke!____This Heroically black shirt clad lard assed hero fart phonies posing as exp____Failure.____Total Failure.____________
For someone who trashes all the readers of the blog you sure do comment a lot on these stories.
And it IS a member of the company that’s developing a weapon. God forbid they ever actually shoot the system they’re designing. And god forbid a 40 year old engineer would have a bit of a beer gut.
Even the most basic redneck could work out they used dummy grenades in the video. Congrats on your gun history, pity you don’t appear to have the common sense to go along with it.
OK I see these guys on every forum. Sports forums especially. It’s obvious this guy Zandor was never in the service of any country and never fired a military weapon if any at all.
Ignore him.
To fire HE grenades requires a lot of government okay both local and federal and inspectors if done in the USA. Those are dummy rounds.….duh.
I wonder how much the fire characteristics change as more and more barrel is available every time you fire off one round in the stack. Plus weight is that huge issue for soldiers and now you have a marksman using his m16 with 2 more 40mm rounds under the barrel.
Good things thought is that it looks easy to zero in on a target and could fix the problem with the ml32 that I saw a marine complaining that it was hard to aim compared to his 203. (in a video of a firefight.)
Not buying it.
One of the advantages of the M203 is your ability to transition between rounds. Don’t need H.E.D.P? Load up a smoke. Doing room clearing? put in buckshot. The problem with this is when you have 3 rounds stacked on top of each other, if your situation changes, you have to take out all three rounds, put them up and slide the fresh set in. That takes up whatever time you might have gained by having three shots ready to go. At least with the XM25 you could color code the magazines or something.
I’m not going to comment on whether i consider Metalstorm is the wave of the future, my words have a tendency to come back and bite me in the butt on on these sort of things. But i’m with Zandor in agreeing this aint it.
Also if those were training rounds we’d see a thick mist of orange on the firing range where they were landing. They’d probably be blue also, but the fact these are custom rounds could account for that.
I didn’t see any explosions, so where is the “firepower”? I realize they were probably using inert rounds for safety, but it would have been a lot more meaningful to see and hear some explosions and destruction.
using actual explosives can be expensive. And its beside the point. We know that the actual 40mm grenades work. The technology is all about the ignition system.
I agree that you would be restricted with swapping grenade types, and limited with rounds you could fire.
But, I like the metalstorm idea more as an area control/ defense system. Kinda like a claymore on steroids. A millions rounds a minute rate of fire can really ruin someones day…
Yeah, I agree with a few above… I think the metal storm concept is good only in a defensive or area control system.
It’s good as an option instead of say a recoiless rifle, otherwise it’s pointless.
Why would anybody want to fire 3 grenades at once???
If you want to take down a brick out-house, use a rocket propelled device (i.e. a SMAW).
If you want to create a smaller explosion, use an M203.
This seems to be a weapon with no real application, just sheer impressiveness with the rate of fire.
As always from metal storm… nice idea… just a tad pointless! Plus, adding electronic wiring into a barrel does not bode well for a lengthy in-service life. Also… I always wonder what happens if there is a jam… barrel explosion? Or does the breech enter the users shoulder?
Let’s see. The M203 was brought on line in 1969 and fitted to the M16a1 and then the a2. The only launcher that could be or was fitted to the CAR-15 was the XM148 which looks nothing like the 203 and it was experimental and used for only a couple years until the 203 came around and then see above. Now the 203 could be fitted with the M4 but the m4 wasn’t introduced until around 1994. The Car-15 and the M4 are not the same weapon. Oopsie. Dontcha just hate facts Mr. Trollenstien?
Why use “practice” rounds instead of live HE? Hmm, lets see, these guys are a civvy company. According to BATF regulations EACH ROUND OF HE or other offensive munition is considered a destructive device, and is assesed appropriate paperwork and $200 tax stamp on top of the expense of the ammo itself. OF COURSE THEY USED DUMMY ROUNDS! Come on guys, till they get a DOD contract for the ammo, the hoops they have to jump through and the cost invovled is very prohibative.
Oh and every time you touch off an explosive round, you have to fill out a form to and let the BATF know the round was detonated/destroyed…and if there is any paperwork foul-up or any of those rounds go missing, you are VERY screwed.
Anybody see the MAUL shotgun attachment?
I’d say thats perfect for door breacher ops.
And you don’t have the issues with explosive projectiles unless you use explosive slugs.
easy there coolhand, xandor never said anything about them using HE, that was Big Daddy. As for awrobocop, he merely was asking why the “training rounds” involved left no trace on the range whatsoever. And its a valid question, why would a weapons company that is sporting its new “revolutionary” toy, leave no signature on the range whatsoever, when one of the most important factors of any weapon is accuracy? Where is the mist of cheeto like dust that goes with the 40 mike mike training round of the 203? Something is fishy with this video, even if the technolgy behind it is sound.
Is that you Zandor, are you posting under another name. That would follow the profile of a troll like Zandor who after disrespecting me disappeared when it was shown that he was in no way knowledgeable about what he spoke.
How HEAVY is this thing? I mean, 40 mike mike is heavy in an of itself, and I never really cared for how a 203 would throw off the balance of an M-16 to begin with.
Also… If 40mm rounds are essentially stacked one on top of each other in the barrel, you must be dealing with some sort of caseless round, right? What happens if the spare barrels you’re humping around get hit by hot frags? I just want to know if I would be carting around something prone to an AD, or sympathetic detonation.
How about ballistics? Assuming that your dealing with the same powder charge, wouldn’t the trajectory of the second and third rounds be slightly different from the first due to the longer effective barrel length? You could compensate with different powder charges between stages… but has this been done?
Are the barrels expendable like an old LAW tube, or do you haul them back to reload? Can you reload them yourself or is it a depot-level job (ie, are these things getting trucked back to battalion)?
no, i am not zandor, i did post previously on here under my email address, but that is a brain fart on my part, sorry about that.
Also, i went ahead and looked up Metal storm in Wikipedia and it pretty much confirms the conclusion we already came to that the rounds are nonexplosive. It’s possible that the writers on the site are being fed the same bowl of crap we are, but it seems more likely to me now that this video is showing the weapon in it’s conceptual stages. I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t show anything about the weapons accurracy by having the rounds mark the ground–signs that Ontos is onto something about the ballistics, perhaps?
Sorry DF. The M-203 is heavy, it’s front heavy and nobody wanted to carry it. Having 3 rounds inside will make it a terrible weapon in real war scenarios. The new M-320 looks like exactly what we need(the best looking 40mm single shot out there) as does the M-32. One weapon overlaps the other and that is the best way to design any weapons system. The Russians were always good at that, look at their ships, artillery and so on.
Metal storm might have a use, especially with with remotely operated platforms. But not as a weapon to be carried by an infantrymen.
No harm no foul, big daddy. Since I’ve only shot cheeto rounds out of the M203, I don’t know about how it compares to the new launchers. I do know that when you compared it’s weight to the 249 and 240 bravo, none of the grenadiers on my tech school team were complaining. Also,for clarification from what i saw of the 320 on online articles, it was shorter than the 203, but also slightly heavier, it’s main advantages being quick loading by the breach opening at the side, not unlike FN’s EGLM, and being able to act as a stand alone.
The troops like the M320, they say it’s so much more accurate than the m203. First hit probability is high. In other words there is a tactical difference between the 2 weapons. The M203 is more of a let them know they are under fire causing them to move or keep their heads down, that allows a detachment to move in on their position. The M320 has the ability to hit those troops with the first round fired making it a much more lethal and effective offensive weapon.
It takes a lot of practice to launch one of those 40mm grenades through a window or into a specific place. The new sighting system allows you a much better chance with less training.
OOOOOO i want i want!!
i bought stock in this company back in 2006 and it kinda went downhill, but they have a great technology and have all the weapons and ammunition ready to go into production. Take a look at their Redback defense system, the robotic sentry turrent equipped with 4x4GL’s … thats 16 grenades per turrent . Go to to their website and check out their work on anti-rpg defenses. After future weapons showed them on Discovery, MetalStorm has yet to hit the main stream media again. WHY ?? A 3 shot grenade launcher bring a huge firepower advantage. Metal Storm is a great company, keep you eyes on them!
To bad the only likely buyer of this type of weaponry does not like to buy from foreign company’s.
I discussed it with one of the MetalStorm’s armorers. It is a very cool device. I also posted photos of the new bullpup model:
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009/10/02/met...
something about stacking 40mm grenades behind each other that makes me cringe.
DC2
These guys seem to have had the right idea for a while, without knowing where to put that idea.
So many good uses to this tech, but we have still been left without a usable product.
I wonder why they cant get something to market that will usher in the rest of the tech on the basis of that success… it feels like a long time we have been talking about them, even before future weapons i was keeping a eye on what they were doing.
It is quite an experience to see fat bellied old men shooting ” Pseudo” macho weapons, while someone takes their picture.____This photo is another joke!____This Heroically black shirt clad lard assed hero fart phonies posing as exp____Failure.____Total Failure.____________
Zandor,
Don’t you have to go play in traffic or play bobbing for french-fries now?
Do you hate everything that has ever existed? seems like it.
TROLL! Gots to luv dem Trolls… all balls & bullshit when sitting behind a keyboard.
I sure as hell don’t need to have someone take pictures of me dressed up in a black shirt pretending to shoot a macho killer weapon.
This pathetic dork, just might qualify to be the Defense Tech Hero of the week.
A ” Macho ” puss gutted old man, poising with a ridiculous M-16 replica plastic squirt gun.
And all the ” tech” experts on this super site swallow it.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Just like dogs at an unattended meat counter.
It is fun to look at the photo shop hoaxes that pass across the net.
This is however, one of the best sites for that, primarily because almost everyone here thinks that the pictures are genuine.
For someone who trashes all the readers of the blog you sure do comment a lot on these stories.
And it IS a member of the company that’s developing a weapon. God forbid they ever actually shoot the system they’re designing. And god forbid a 40 year old engineer would have a bit of a beer gut.
I see an M16 firing, and I see a 40 mm grenade launcher firing. I don’t see any squirt guns.
Also, it’s not a ‘picture.’
So are you saying the grenade launcher is a hoax or the M-16? You’ll have to clarify on your ranting.
No.
I am not saying a grenade launcher on a rifle is a hoax.
I carried an xm 203 on my Car 15 for a long time.
And, I fired it more often than I wanted to.
How about you, did you ever fire anything off, other than your keyboard?
What I am saying is that there is something wrong with the picture
Please just look at the picture for a few moments. The picture has been worked on.
Are the barrels in alignment with the receiver?
Also during the exciting video, we see the shooter being moved by the recoil of a 5.56mm round.
Then we see someone shooting the 40mm at a turkey silloutte target, however we don’t see an explosion.
Even the most basic redneck could work out they used dummy grenades in the video. Congrats on your gun history, pity you don’t appear to have the common sense to go along with it.
OK I see these guys on every forum. Sports forums especially. It’s obvious this guy Zandor was never in the service of any country and never fired a military weapon if any at all.
Ignore him.
To fire HE grenades requires a lot of government okay both local and federal and inspectors if done in the USA. Those are dummy rounds.….duh.
I wonder how much the fire characteristics change as more and more barrel is available every time you fire off one round in the stack. Plus weight is that huge issue for soldiers and now you have a marksman using his m16 with 2 more 40mm rounds under the barrel.
Good things thought is that it looks easy to zero in on a target and could fix the problem with the ml32 that I saw a marine complaining that it was hard to aim compared to his 203. (in a video of a firefight.)
Not buying it.
One of the advantages of the M203 is your ability to transition between rounds. Don’t need H.E.D.P? Load up a smoke. Doing room clearing? put in buckshot. The problem with this is when you have 3 rounds stacked on top of each other, if your situation changes, you have to take out all three rounds, put them up and slide the fresh set in. That takes up whatever time you might have gained by having three shots ready to go. At least with the XM25 you could color code the magazines or something.
I’m not going to comment on whether i consider Metalstorm is the wave of the future, my words have a tendency to come back and bite me in the butt on on these sort of things. But i’m with Zandor in agreeing this aint it.
Also if those were training rounds we’d see a thick mist of orange on the firing range where they were landing. They’d probably be blue also, but the fact these are custom rounds could account for that.
I didn’t see any explosions, so where is the “firepower”? I realize they were probably using inert rounds for safety, but it would have been a lot more meaningful to see and hear some explosions and destruction.
using actual explosives can be expensive. And its beside the point. We know that the actual 40mm grenades work. The technology is all about the ignition system.
I agree that you would be restricted with swapping grenade types, and limited with rounds you could fire.
But, I like the metalstorm idea more as an area control/ defense system. Kinda like a claymore on steroids. A millions rounds a minute rate of fire can really ruin someones day…
Yeah, I agree with a few above… I think the metal storm concept is good only in a defensive or area control system.
It’s good as an option instead of say a recoiless rifle, otherwise it’s pointless.
Why would anybody want to fire 3 grenades at once???
If you want to take down a brick out-house, use a rocket propelled device (i.e. a SMAW).
If you want to create a smaller explosion, use an M203.
This seems to be a weapon with no real application, just sheer impressiveness with the rate of fire.
As always from metal storm… nice idea… just a tad pointless! Plus, adding electronic wiring into a barrel does not bode well for a lengthy in-service life. Also… I always wonder what happens if there is a jam… barrel explosion? Or does the breech enter the users shoulder?
On their bullet based unit, Metal storm claims that if their is a missfire, the next round will just push the round in front of it out.
Would it work the same way with the grenade launcher? Or, does the tube become a glorified pipe bomb?
Whoa nelly. Ya got me there boy howdy. I guess I’m in good company what with the keyboard firing and all.
Let’s see. The M203 was brought on line in 1969 and fitted to the M16a1 and then the a2. The only launcher that could be or was fitted to the CAR-15 was the XM148 which looks nothing like the 203 and it was experimental and used for only a couple years until the 203 came around and then see above. Now the 203 could be fitted with the M4 but the m4 wasn’t introduced until around 1994. The Car-15 and the M4 are not the same weapon. Oopsie. Dontcha just hate facts Mr. Trollenstien?
Dear WJS;
The XM 203 most certainly was fitted to to the Car 15, the XM 148 was also used, but gave way to the XM203, as the Xm203 was easier to use.
I had people on my team that carried XM 203s on their Car 15s in1971.
Why use “practice” rounds instead of live HE? Hmm, lets see, these guys are a civvy company. According to BATF regulations EACH ROUND OF HE or other offensive munition is considered a destructive device, and is assesed appropriate paperwork and $200 tax stamp on top of the expense of the ammo itself. OF COURSE THEY USED DUMMY ROUNDS! Come on guys, till they get a DOD contract for the ammo, the hoops they have to jump through and the cost invovled is very prohibative.
Oh and every time you touch off an explosive round, you have to fill out a form to and let the BATF know the round was detonated/destroyed…and if there is any paperwork foul-up or any of those rounds go missing, you are VERY screwed.
Anybody see the MAUL shotgun attachment?
I’d say thats perfect for door breacher ops.
And you don’t have the issues with explosive projectiles unless you use explosive slugs.
easy there coolhand, xandor never said anything about them using HE, that was Big Daddy. As for awrobocop, he merely was asking why the “training rounds” involved left no trace on the range whatsoever. And its a valid question, why would a weapons company that is sporting its new “revolutionary” toy, leave no signature on the range whatsoever, when one of the most important factors of any weapon is accuracy? Where is the mist of cheeto like dust that goes with the 40 mike mike training round of the 203? Something is fishy with this video, even if the technolgy behind it is sound.
Is that you Zandor, are you posting under another name. That would follow the profile of a troll like Zandor who after disrespecting me disappeared when it was shown that he was in no way knowledgeable about what he spoke.
Dear WJS;
For your edification, I provide the following information.
In the book. SOG, A Photo History of the Secret Wars.
By John L. Plaster
ISBN 1–58160-058–5
Paladin Press
Box 1307
Boulder, CO
On page 139 you can read about the XM 203s being attached to Car 15s.
On pages 254 and 255 you will see pictures of XM 203s fitted to Car 15s.
On the back of the book’s dust cover is another picture of a XM 203 fitted to a Car 15.
I hope this helps clarify things for you.
Sincerely,
Zandor
Hey Zandor did you ever fire one or even hold one, or have to carry one for 10–15 miles with about 100 pounds of gear?.…LMAO.
How HEAVY is this thing? I mean, 40 mike mike is heavy in an of itself, and I never really cared for how a 203 would throw off the balance of an M-16 to begin with.
Also… If 40mm rounds are essentially stacked one on top of each other in the barrel, you must be dealing with some sort of caseless round, right? What happens if the spare barrels you’re humping around get hit by hot frags? I just want to know if I would be carting around something prone to an AD, or sympathetic detonation.
How about ballistics? Assuming that your dealing with the same powder charge, wouldn’t the trajectory of the second and third rounds be slightly different from the first due to the longer effective barrel length? You could compensate with different powder charges between stages… but has this been done?
Are the barrels expendable like an old LAW tube, or do you haul them back to reload? Can you reload them yourself or is it a depot-level job (ie, are these things getting trucked back to battalion)?
no, i am not zandor, i did post previously on here under my email address, but that is a brain fart on my part, sorry about that.
Also, i went ahead and looked up Metal storm in Wikipedia and it pretty much confirms the conclusion we already came to that the rounds are nonexplosive. It’s possible that the writers on the site are being fed the same bowl of crap we are, but it seems more likely to me now that this video is showing the weapon in it’s conceptual stages. I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t show anything about the weapons accurracy by having the rounds mark the ground–signs that Ontos is onto something about the ballistics, perhaps?
Sorry DF. The M-203 is heavy, it’s front heavy and nobody wanted to carry it. Having 3 rounds inside will make it a terrible weapon in real war scenarios. The new M-320 looks like exactly what we need(the best looking 40mm single shot out there) as does the M-32. One weapon overlaps the other and that is the best way to design any weapons system. The Russians were always good at that, look at their ships, artillery and so on.
Metal storm might have a use, especially with with remotely operated platforms. But not as a weapon to be carried by an infantrymen.
As long as we know where you got your information from. Thanks.
Dear WJS;
I didn’t get my information from the book.
I used the source to confirm what I had written in an earlier post about having had first hand experience with XM 203s attached to a Car 15s.
Zandor
No harm no foul, big daddy. Since I’ve only shot cheeto rounds out of the M203, I don’t know about how it compares to the new launchers. I do know that when you compared it’s weight to the 249 and 240 bravo, none of the grenadiers on my tech school team were complaining. Also,for clarification from what i saw of the 320 on online articles, it was shorter than the 203, but also slightly heavier, it’s main advantages being quick loading by the breach opening at the side, not unlike FN’s EGLM, and being able to act as a stand alone.
The troops like the M320, they say it’s so much more accurate than the m203. First hit probability is high. In other words there is a tactical difference between the 2 weapons. The M203 is more of a let them know they are under fire causing them to move or keep their heads down, that allows a detachment to move in on their position. The M320 has the ability to hit those troops with the first round fired making it a much more lethal and effective offensive weapon.
It takes a lot of practice to launch one of those 40mm grenades through a window or into a specific place. The new sighting system allows you a much better chance with less training.