Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Every Other Implement

The XM25 is the deadliest hand weapon in the army arsenal. Why? Because it can fire 25mm rounds that explode at any distance set by the soldier, killing people protected behind walls or trenches. [More]
For government use only, naturally.

What do you think, Mr. Coxe?
Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American... [T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
Oh, yeah, but you don't understand.

Things are different now.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love the Pravda-esque cowering and bootlicking.

Jesus here needs to quit his desk job and join the Guard - maybe he'd even be allowed to play with the big boys and *shoot a gun*.

Rhett III

David Codrea said...

Off-topic comment deleted. If you have a tip, please send it in.

House rules.

Toaster 802 said...

Sorry, did not see any rules posted anywhere, so I did not know.

I thought it was on topic due to the fact that these gun "owners" thought that the Jews in the Warsaw getto uprising thought that for 400 combatants, 59 pistols and 7 rifles made them "heavily" armed. And how Tench Coxe's statement and the post about the XM 25 belonging in civilian hands would make there "permitted" minds overload.

Oh well....my bad.

jon said...

the XM8 didn't pass muster and devolved into the "modular" selling point. this one doesn't look much better but at least they're trying to solve only one problem at a time, now.

"The smart round knows where it is at all times thanks to its built-in circuitry."

no it does not. it performs dead reckoning. the round is programmed wirelessly while it is still inside the weapon, its path is not corrected during flight AFAIK.

range measurement requires an IR illuminator: the shooter's position and intended target are momentarily revealed to passive observers when he measures range to target.

nearby wifi receivers can feed traffic back to a computer which can break an individual weapon's encryption after X number of chambered-round reprogramming sessions (short but sweet). rounds inside that weapon can then be reprogrammed by someone other than the shooter, although the timing is still an issue (time is everything in networking). you could just generate new keys every few days during a garrison cleaning of the weapon.

really, the biggest problem this weapon has is that you can just shoot its electronics out. the weapon itself is a bigger target than the shooter's own face. it attempts to provide an advantage over the very kind of combatant that can eliminate it, and to provide that advantage to another combatant that cannot already do what the first one can. if he could, he wouldn't need the help.

it's a fine concept, but the automatic grenade launcher will probably be more cost-effective than this for a while. you can't get away with "precision exploding the shit out of a kitchen or bedroom" in what isn't supposed to be a war zone -- either you don't use ordinance or you go all out.

Toastrider said...

I'd worry more about General Atomics' new railgun :)