XM25 supergun that shoots round corners goes to US troops in Afghanistan

 

IT IS already being called the most lethal infantry gun ever, capable of hitting an enemy with the help of a laser range-finder even if the target is hiding behind a thick wall. 

Now the XM25 weapon, which can launch grenades over a distance of 700m, bursting with pinpoint accuracy over the heads of an enemy, has been deployed to Afghanistan to test its capability against the Taliban.

The "smart" grenade-launcher is no bigger than an ordinary rifle and is simple to fire. The technology is so advanced that a soldier will only have to know roughly where he is supposed to be aiming the sights, and then leave the rest to the gun.

The weapon assesses the range to the target and makes a calculation about the precise grid reference for the fusing to detonate the grenades in the air.

"You get behind something when someone is shooting at you, and that sort of cover has protected people for thousands of years. Now we're taking that away from the enemy forever," said Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Lehner, the Pentagon project manager for the XM25 weapon system.

The XM25 has been under development for a decade and is claimed to be 300 times more effective than current infantry weapons.

Colonel Lehner said that the weapon, which has been described as a "game-changer" in Afghanistan and the Taliban's worst nightmare, has been deployed with special units in the south and east of the country for more than a week. "It's been actively on patrols and in various combat outposts in areas that are hot," he said.

The programmable supergun fires 25mm air-bursting shells which have embedded microchips to guide the rounds to the target. "This is the first time we're putting smart technology into the hands of the individual soldier," Colonel Lehner said.

Provided the tests prove that the XM25 can do what it says on the manufacturer's label, the Pentagon plans to buy about 12,500, at a cost of up to $US30,000 each. The semi-automatic, shoulder-fired weapon, called a "counter-defilade target-engagement system", has been developed by Heckler & Koch and the American company Alliant Techsystems.

 

Despite the cost, Richard Jones, the editor of Jane's Infantry Weapons, said that the alternatives used currently in Afghanistan were far more expensive.

"If you can hit a target with two air-burst grenade rounds from an XM25 you won't have to expend huge amounts of ammunition from small arms or call in an A10 [tank-busting ground-attack aircraft]," he said.

Current grenade-launchers, including the British version attached under the barrel of an SA80 rifle, require the soldier to make a number of estimates before firing, in the hope that the munitions will land near the target.

With the XM25, if an enemy fighter pops his head up from behind a wall, shoots and then ducks back, an XM25 infantryman will be able to still target him. "This is turning soldiers with average shooting skills into those with phenomenal shooting skills," Colonel Lehner said.

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