reviving the XM29 OICW

The OICW is also extremely bulky.
They already had replaced everything they could with polymer.
A 30 mm round is heavier than a 25 mm round again making the weapon too heavy.
It's sighting and fuse setting system is too battery dependent. If your batteries go dead the grenade launcher part is just so much assorted junk.

The OICW was split into two systems- the XM8 rifle (which was cancelled a few years back) and the XM25 CTDE grenade lancher, which was fielded briefly before funding was cut for the project (though it still may make its way back to service).

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM25_CDTE


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We learn more from our failures than our successes. We should keep trying to overcome the problems.

The South Koreans continued with the OICW program, which lead to the ROK Military adopting the S&T Daewoo K-11 in 2010 and the UAE Military acquiring them in 2011.

The S&T Daewoo K-11 is lighter than the Alliant Techsystems/H&K XM-29 by a several pounds which was done by switching the 20mm airburst launcher from semi-automatic to bolt-action.

ROK Military have deployed the K-11 in Afghanistan.

It's still bulky and battery dependent.

If the batteries go dead, it's a six round grenade launcher with impact fused grenades and a 30 round .223 rifle.

or for the XM25, a six round semiauto grenade launcher. those things dont go away when the batteries die.

Adding a grenade launcher to the infantry rifle for additional team firepower introduces unintended consequences. The launcher is a work around to get something in the way of mortar team firepower onto a target using direct fire delivery, but the trajectory is anything but easy to calculate.

Training is inordinately expensive in either case - even with powder puff rounds, the operator has to shoot a lot of them, and maintain proficiency in order to get at least second round hits. By then the target will likely have responded with increased fire and gone to ground making them hard to find.

The MG gunner and those possibly behind the unit with crew served weapons would likely have already been engaging those targets, some with indirect fire weapons which can reach behind cover the enemy is using. In other words, it's complicated, and it's hard to justify the expense when the results aren't showing the system gets more than a incremental increase in hits on the target. A well practiced grenadier can do just as well by mechanical eyesight and hold over as the electronically controlled one, it doesn't go down unless hit, and both are still subject to return fire requiring them to seek cover.

That old school grenadier can keep trying to put rounds downrange even by Kentucky windage - can the optically sighted one do that? It's not been well explained.

The big picture is that infantry direct fire weapons are now in a place in time relative to a lot of other systems in their technological progression - they are matured, and major steps forward aren't happening because there isn't much more to be improved. Like binoculars in the '40s, about all we've been able to add are lens coatings. In battle rifles, we moved to self loaders and magazines, and we still use self loaders and magazines 75 years later. The issue rifle has been in service 45 years, guys. The last improvement was to add red dots - not really any major gun part redesign. You can interchange parts off an original M16 dewatt kit and install M4 parts, they literally drop in. The Air Force is still using M16's first issued in the '60s. It's documented and pics online, they served in SW Asia.

That's why the OCIW has gone nowhere, the carbine trials cancelled, and everything is static. Until we get caseless ammo up to working speed, there isn't much to do except argue DI vs piston . . .

The M203 40 mm GL has been in service over 30 years itself. Time and effort and money would be better spent improving ammo for that. Not that DP needs much improvement. The Dual Purpose round produces the same frag effects as the original HE round AND can punch through a couple of inches of armor and stuff like masonry.

There was an airburst round that worked something like a "bouncing betty" or the Late WWII German 81 mm airburst mortar round. It would strike the ground and be thrown back into the air by a small charge before the main charge went off resulting in a very low airburst.

The only change we wanted to the launcher portion of the M203 system was better sights. The folding hand guard sights were crude and sloppy in use and the carrying handle sights were too fragile. We asked for (and were ignored) a sight much like the one used on M-14 and earlier rifles equipped with rifle grenade launchers. We thought, and I still do, that the portion of those sights that had a leveling bubble and the plate it mounted to with range info on it could be placed on the top of the M203 hand guard so that the weapon could be fired with the butt on the ground with the butt on its side.......just the way we fired it high angle without sights anyway.... using the leveling bubble to obtain proper angle for a given range. Having fired both the old M79 and the M203 in normal low angle (hey below 45 degrees is low angle) and high angle with the butts on the ground I thought the system would work quite well.

To be honest as a 19 year old trooper my biggest beef with the 203 verses the 79 was that when we went to 203's they took away our 1911A1 pistols. On the other hand in service the M16A1/M203 was my favorite model of the M16 series. Still wanted the pistol and I don't want to hear how grunts don't carry what they don't need. 1911A1s were my teddy bear when sleeping in strange places......

-kBob

In the US Army...
The H&K M-320 grenade launcher is slowly replacing the M-203 grenade launcher.

The M320 is awesome. I hated the M203 because of how much weight and bulk it added to the front of my M4. The whole point of that carbine is to be lightweight and compact and the 203 ruins it. I carried the M320 separate with its buttstock attachment and found it to be much more effective than a M203. It has built in sights which are decent, but we would just practice until firing with no sights was natural.

kBob - check out the PSQ18, sounds like what you wished you had. They work well, just add even more weight/bulk on the front of the rifle.

I just think that it makes sense to have always available something to equal the effectiveness of the rpg.

Boy, picture's worth a thousand words, isn't it? Gun looks about as practical as a double-neck base, and for the same reason (too damn big). Honestly, that optic looks to be as much the problem as anything. In any case, the soldier doesn't look too stoked to be rockin' it (he looks very tired, too)

From what I understand, the XM29 evolved into an excellent rifle (the G36) as well as a dedicated light grenade launcher. How many times has the US tried the Master Key concept at this point? Will we ever learn?

The Germans have a habit of over-engineering their solutions to the point of impracticality; the US is terrible about trying to solve too many tasks with a single tool to the point of mediocrity. Our boys fight in squads so they don't have to do every mode of combat themselves; they can support specialized weapons in the squad, magnifying their effectiveness beyond the sum of individual capabilities. Last time we tried to solve every problem with the same hammer, we got heavy and uncontrollable select-fire 308's all across NATO

Now, if they'd folded in a chainsaw rather than a grenade launcher, then they'd have something

TCB

Heh, I find it mildly amusing how critical everyone is being of an experimental weapon system that wasn't fielded. I mean, doesn't the fact that it wasn't fielded make any criticism moot?

I do like all the R&D that went into it and I hope we keep doing it, keep trying. The world of small arms is due for the next big advancement. We haven't had a big evolutionary advancement since the small caliber assault rifle circa WWII and just after, haven't had a revolutionary advancement since the brass cartridge. The revolutionary advancement just before that was rifling.

I think more likely something like an HK G11 caseless rifle will be made with an underslung 40mm grenade launcher with 4-5 rounds in one tube, one behind the other. The grenades will be caseless and will be electrically fired similair to the Metal Storm weapon of recent invention.

I think that would be much lighter and more effective.

My opinion is that firearms are about as good as they are going to get. You can tweak around the edges, but I don't see anything coming down the road that is going to revolutionize firearms.

There is only so much you can do using expanding gases to propel a projectile.

Smarter weapons like some of the controlled grenades have their place but the ammo weighs enough that they are an inherently limited capability. In any case, it seems likely that it may not be all that hard to hide from such weapons. People get pretty clever when other people are trying to kill them and adapt very quickly.

Improving accuracy is a big deal though. If you can get twice as many rounds on target by improving accuracy, it is not quite, but almost as good as having twice as much ammo.

A rifle is a much smaller target by itself than a rifle with a soldier attached to it. Maybe some kind of means by which a soldier can control a rifle from a safer position. It is not like that is real crazy technology wise.

I'm not really aware of anything in our current small arms that came from the SPIW and it's later incarnation the OICW.

Click to expand...

The G36 came out of OICW, and it spawned all the next-gen rifles coming out now (ARX, SCAR, MR556, etc.). Not a good investment, perhaps (because the AR18 did the same thing years ago) but not a total loss, either.

I think more likely something like an HK G11 caseless rifle will be made with an underslung 40mm grenade launcher with 4-5 rounds in one tube, one behind the other. The grenades will be caseless and will be electrically fired similair to the Metal Storm weapon of recent invention.

Click to expand...

G11; talk about a money pit with nothing to show for it. I agree that the grenade system would make more sense than a mechanical semi-auto; I have to wonder if the S Koreans, at least, are looking into that since it'd be even smaller/lighter than the bolt action system w/ box mags they have now on their version of the system.


Speaking of pictures worth 1000 words; this picture tells me volumes about the feasibility of the G11 (and research tells me about the heat transfer problems that are physically insurmountable)

TCB

barnbwt said:

From what I understand, the XM29 evolved into an excellent rifle (the G36) as well as a dedicated light grenade launcher.

Click to expand...

The K-11 uses the Daewoo K-2 for the 5.56x45mm platform.

I'm not really aware of anything in our current small arms that came from the SPIW and it's later incarnation the OICW.

Click to expand...

The XM25 is directly descended from the OICW project. It has been fielded in a theater of combat, and while funding was cut, the project is still technically alive.

It was fielded as part of a test. There is a huge list of weapons and equipment that were fielded for test purposes and never were adopted. What part of it are we currently using?

Click to expand...

Such is the nature of field testing. Many systems don't get adopted. Some do. The XM25 apparently proved effective in combat and popular with its users, and its current failure to be funded and further developed (following a training incident in which a double-feed caused a detonation) apparently have more to do with sequestration and budget cuts more than anything else.

Which is fine in my book. We shouldn't be buying what we can't afford.

Wait, I thought the history was HK ripped off the AR18 to design the "kinetic energy," or, "useful" portion of the weapon, then salvaged that development after the OICW's cancellation in the form the G36/XM8, and ultimately the HK416 derived from those two. Wikipedia could easily be wrong, though

TCB