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It’s silly. Very silly indeed.

Very very cool in its way.

But also silly!

Its interesting, so far only the Neopup PAW-2 has worked I think out of the various semi auto grenade launchers (the rest tried to be clever with airburst stuff), but its a small round. What is the advantage of this larger round that still isn't 40mm, does the ability to fire more make it viable?

Like, at a guess?

Probably a more direct-trajectory round combined with the 5+1 to try sell it as a squad-level support weapon. Lighter ammo, easier to engage, more rapid follow up.

Whether or not anyone bites is a different matter, probably just an expensive toy that gets a handful of trials.

I remember recently seeing something about China leaning into this kind of system. Is this a case of "look, they seem to think its important" rather than having a solid doctrinal need for it?

Almost definitely. It is also just the job of weapons manufacturers to try sell guns - it's a super hard sell to upgrade most of what the west uses for small arms, so new guns is sort of it.

Is it cool? Hell yeah. Is it practical? No, probably not. Like, what does this contribute that a 7.62mm GPMG doesn't? More to the point, what does it contribute that makes it worth the purchase, logistics, training, and WEIGHT to a soldier?

There's going to be a bunch of officers who will never have to carry it convinced it's the best thing since sliced bread, but I don't think there's any gaping hole this thing will fill.

I read something about it years ago. Has to do with modern combat changing and shifting attention more to insurgents and in-city fighting.

If they combine it with some simple airburst proximity ammunition it could have a future as an anti-drone weapon.

It is highly likely that every squad is going to have to devote one guy to be the anti-drone guy. Which right now basically means shotguns. If you can swap a shotgun for something that has a little more range as well as utility vs ground targets it might be an option. As it stands, mr shotgun is also going to have to carry an M4 and that is heavy.

I could see a future drone protection position in every squad who is armed with a grenade launcher that primarily has airburst proximity fuse ammo, but also has regular grenades for ground and armor targets as well. This could potentially be useful enough to allow the guy to ditch the service rifle entirely and just focus on the grenade launcher.

Maybe 2/3 of the load is simple proximity fuse warheads and 1/3 is regular impact grenades. maybe with a few heat warheads for anti-tank duties. You could have a programmable multi-purpose warhead that could be used against infantry and drones, but that would be more expensive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:
I remember recently seeing something about China leaning into this kind of system. Is this a case of "look, they seem to think its important" rather than having a solid doctrinal need for it?

yeah, they have a grenade launcher "DMR" type monstrosity.




Its basically China admitting they don't have the capability to mass produce grenades to the point they can have an automatic grenade launcher so they compensate by making it longer ranged and, allegedly' more accurate. The issue is its not really that much more accurate and it clearly gives anyone using it a black eye each time its fired. So it likely will not be any more accurate than a Mk19 in actual battle conditions while being harder to use.

On the accuracy thing?

How accurate do you need a grenade round to be?

Against armour, there’s a fairly large target. Against infantry, lobbing a few frag rounds in their general direction may not need hurt anyone to prove effective?

Pleas note the question mark, yeah.

There's never a time when less accurate is better, but take your point.

Infantry are the easy bit - even running, they're not that fast, they're squishy, and you don't need a direct hit because shrapnel does it fine.

Armour, different matter - it's a big target, although not really that big, possibly moving, possibly suppressing you, and you need to score direct hits for a HEAT charge to do anything.

Bigger, slower rounds suffer more from windage, suffer from needing your soldiers to compensate for their arcing fire - add stress, and it's messy.

If you fire at something 100m away, and you're 1 degree off due to stress, movement, suboptimal optic, anything - you're going to miss your point of aim by 1.8m.

I think that grenade launcher has nice potential. I see it as a modern version of the M-79 "Blooper". The magazine design means that it's capacity can vary due to magazines being able to be designed to hold various numbers of rounds with a different configuration of the magazine. Think of a current 30 round Glock magazine adapted to this platform. I like it.

William

Its important when you are, say, trying to plop the round through a window or into a foxhole. Even the propaganda piece china put out on their launcher was not particularly impressive. It was hitting 8 foot sheets of plywood at 100 meters and it was all over the place on that target.

Far from useless, but it wasn't exactly screaming precision. Precision would be putting the grenades through an 8" square at 100 meters repeatedly. That would be useful for plonking into foxholes and windows or specific weak spots on vehicles.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the accuracy thing?

How accurate do you need a grenade round to be?

Against armour, there’s a fairly large target. Against infantry, lobbing a few frag rounds in their general direction may not need hurt anyone to prove effective?

Pleas note the question mark, yeah.

"Close" is famously could enough for horseshoes and hand grenades.

I was better on the grenade range than with rifle qualification. Certainly grenades are more fun.

The grenade launcher is crying out for a chainsaw bayonet, though.

Gardensnake wrote:
I think that grenade launcher has nice potential. I see it as a modern version of the M-79 "Blooper". The magazine design means that it's capacity can vary due to magazines being able to be designed to hold various numbers of rounds with a different configuration of the magazine. Think of a current 30 round Glock magazine adapted to this platform. I like it.

William

Now I am imagining a 20+ lb stick mag of 30mm grenades

Given Ukraine is now using more and more remote driven ground platforms as a counter to drones...

But yes, what is going to be the cheap anti drone measure. Mounted on armour? Will tanks ripple off boxes of airburst grenades. Can you realistically use it with infantry?

And for the purposes of this forum - will members be getting sub 40mm grenade launching rifles, and what will the local range owner do in response?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
And for the purposes of this forum - will members be getting sub 40mm grenade launching rifles, and what will the local range owner do in response?

The training rounds are pretty satisfying, and I could see enjoying pelting a junked car (or some other object) with orange chalk powder as an alternative to high explosive. Hitting a stack of water jugs with solid shot would also be entertaining.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Given Ukraine is now using more and more remote driven ground platforms as a counter to drones...

But yes, what is going to be the cheap anti drone measure. Mounted on armour? Will tanks ripple off boxes of airburst grenades. Can you realistically use it with infantry?

And for the purposes of this forum - will members be getting sub 40mm grenade launching rifles, and what will the local range owner do in response?

All of the above I expect.

Infantry squads will have one guy with an anti-drone support weapon of some kind. Airburst grenade/shotgun shells/etc...

Tanks will have active point defense turrets with airburst shells, maybe mini-radar with a few hundred meter range to detect incoming drones. Dedicated AA tanks which swap the main gun for a medium range autocannon with proximity shells. Basically, an M42 duster with proximity shells, a short range small target radar, and low overall profile.

We'll probably see dedicated point defense vehicles/drones. Imagine that DARPA mule but instead of carrying random gear you have one which has a small version of CIWS. Maybe a gatling shotgun firing 12 gauge proximity warheads.

Permenant military bases will have both mobile and fixed gun defenses. Short ranged flak and proximity shell firing small and medium caliber guns. All planes will need to be stored in protected hangers even deep behind the lines.

Is there any milage in trying to jam drones? Or is that, in the real world, too broad spectrum a technology, and you’d unavoidably end up jamming your own radio and WiFi communications too?

Jamming is absolutely a huge thing. Yes, it does jam your own communications depending on the spectrum being used. Jamming comes in both complete spectrum as well as specific spectrum. You can just jam everything, which of course jams everything including your own stuff. Or you can try and figure out which frequencies your opponent is using and jam those. Which leads to playing ring around the rosy with frequencies as everything changes to keep ahead of the enemy.

And then there is the option to go completely jam immune with fiber optic cable tethers. IE: the drone has a spool of cable that it drops as it flies out. Ukraine is now covered in the stuff if you look at recent photos. The disadvantage is that the cable has a limited range(though you can still get a few kilometers on even a small drone) and it can get physically severed.

Russia has been investing in electronic warfare for a very long time, both Russia and Ukraine went into the war with extensive battlefield doctrine and equipment to do this. One of the main reasons Ukraine was so successful in the first couple weeks of the war was because Russia was not actively using all their SPAA and EW equipment as they invaded while Ukraine was. So much of their high tech stuff got destroyed or captured on the road to Kiev.

Electronic Warfare equipment also has a weakness in that it is extremely noisy(in the electromagnetic spectrum), it has to be to do its job. So you pretty much know exactly where the EW equipment is and you can make weapons to take advantage of that. Anti-radiation missiles are designed to go after radar arrays and you can make similar things for EW stuff. EW jamming is, in its crudest description, basically using electronics to scream louder than whatever equipment your opponent is using, be that radios or drone controls, and your opponent is going to know where you are when you do that.

Oh cool.

Sounds almost like a modern Enigma Mission. As in if you can somehow ascertain which range of frequencies the enemy’s drones operate within, without them knowing you know that? You’ve a significant advantage.

Well, kind of. Once you start jamming a frequency there is zero secrecy. They'll know you are jamming them and on what frequencies. Best you can do is wait to actually jam them when you think it will be most inconvenient. And when operating your own drones you'll want to keep which frequency they are running on a secret till the last moment.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, kind of. Once you start jamming a frequency there is zero secrecy. They'll know you are jamming them and on what frequencies. Best you can do is wait to actually jam them when you think it will be most inconvenient. And when operating your own drones you'll want to keep which frequency they are running on a secret till the last moment.

There is a possibility that they will be treated like chemical weapons - everyone has countermeasures, they're a pain to implement for both sides, and trying to counteract them doesn't gain an advantage commensurate with the effort.

In an actual peer-to-peer conflict, I expect space would be broomed out, which would dramatically change comms and ISR. There's a reason artillerists are having to go back to learning to use fire tables and not long ago there was talk of reactivating Project ELF and LORAN.

Everything old could be new again. Practice your map reading, young cadets, and get comfy with those iron sights!

I always expected that in any near-peer conflict going forward we will see aircraft and all precision munitions being far reduced in effectiveness. Both because there are a lot of counters AND that they are so expensive that you cannot make enough of them. They'll still be there, but more and more rare as the conflict drags on.

One more reason I hope the NFA goes away eventually. We need airburst munitions so us civies can have a counter to drone threats.

I would not be surprised if every military eventually readopts equivalent weapons to the towed medium caliber autocannon AA guns that were used in WW2 except everybody gives them simple proximity fused shells. Just reproduce the WW2 tech that we had. Super analog and mass produced.

We'll bring back the Flakwagons

Ukraine’s certainly has, except I think there is no real purpose to towed weapons like that any more. Pick ups with multiple MG mounts, Gepards, etc. although I’ve not heard that much about the gepards recently. They aren’t the flashiest things, so they might just be plugging away in the background with the limelight stolen by shinier things. Or they might have been droned like Russia’s S300 and S400’systems.

Meanwhile, there's a new trigger gizmo that makes something like full auto accessible to people who aren't willing to spend $20,000 on a firearm. Brandon Herrera likes it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjoiXYSyNk8

Just watched that the other day. Unfortunately it looks like the ATF says (and not says simultaneously somehow) that FRT's being legal only applies to plaintiffs of that particular case, and only to one particular brand of FRT.

They just arrested a guy at a gun range with one for having a "machine gun".

The_Real_Chris wrote:


And for the purposes of this forum - will members be getting sub 40mm grenade launching rifles, and what will the local range owner do in response?

Since I own my range, any grenade launchers are welcome, as long as you replace any destroyed targeted.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Well, kind of. Once you start jamming a frequency there is zero secrecy. They'll know you are jamming them and on what frequencies. Best you can do is wait to actually jam them when you think it will be most inconvenient. And when operating your own drones you'll want to keep which frequency they are running on a secret till the last moment.

Modern jammers are pretty good at detecting frequencies used, even for hopping transmitters. Broadband jamming and putting out a ton of power is not the way its done in most cases.

Obligatory jamming reference

 cuda1179 wrote:
Just watched that the other day. Unfortunately it looks like the ATF says (and not says simultaneously somehow) that FRT's being legal only applies to plaintiffs of that particular case, and only to one particular brand of FRT.

They just arrested a guy at a gun range with one for having a "machine gun".

They've actually lost the FRT cases entirely. They are not considered machine guns. That case you are referring to is an interesting one though. The guy will more than likely win, but he was definitely being a dumb ass by putting an FRT into a rented gun.

The controlling case of the FRTs was ruled on and the ATF was directed to not appeal. But even if it was still ongoing, each new type of FRT is considered a different thing. Like, FRTs are not a legally defined term, so even if one type of FRT was ruled to be a machine gun it would have no bearing on another manufacturer who had an FRT with a different design.

Unfortunately, individual rogue ATF agents might still charge you for having an FRT even if they are legal. Just for the purpose of making you defend yourself in court because they're anti-freedom buttholes.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The controlling case of the FRTs was ruled on and the ATF was directed to not appeal. But even if it was still ongoing, each new type of FRT is considered a different thing. Like, FRTs are not a legally defined term, so even if one type of FRT was ruled to be a machine gun it would have no bearing on another manufacturer who had an FRT with a different design.

Unfortunately, individual rogue ATF agents might still charge you for having an FRT even if they are legal. Just for the purpose of making you defend yourself in court because they're anti-freedom buttholes.

A lot of stuff is up in the air at the moment and I'm going to wait until all the case law is sorted out and (hopefully) confirmed in statute. As long as a law is on the books, the opinion can be reversed. Michigan had an emergency powers act that was ruled unconstitutional, and while repealing it was looked on as just making the rubble bounce, it meant that as a practical matter, it was really most sincerely dead.

The thing about rapid fire is that it gets real expensive, real fast. A friend of mine owned an MG 34, which was super cool, and he loved showing it off, but going through the range and blasting through hundreds of dollars in ammo in seconds was not so cool. He ended up selling it.

Something in a pistol caliber seems the way to go. All the fun of the giggle switch, a natural limit via magazine size, and ammo at a fraction of the price.

Of course the best ammo is someone else's and to this day I regret passing up an opportunity to do a story on the Security Forces' summer training where I was promised ample hands-on training in return for a glowing report. I previously did a similar story on the firefighters, who 'rewarded' me by getting me utterly blitzed at the All Ranks Club.

An experience of regret only superseded by the night I got into a drinking contest with some Army colleagues.

Reporting for duty the next morning:

"Airman, you are seriously tore up."

"Yes, sergeant, but you should see the other guys!"

Yeah, an MG34 would be very expensive to shoot.

My dream would be for the NFA to go away and pick up an MG3. Its an MG42 that shoots affordable ammo