I clicked the poll at the bottom of the military group the other day and discovered that I was in a very small minority of responders, Active Duty military. So here's a quick hello and a brief discussion on what the latest and greatest magic bullet will do (and why it won't stop warfare).
So first, some background on me. I'm an active duty Marine, aviator type. I've had a couple of deployments, one to Afghanistan as a staff officer making the unsexy side of war happen. I like being a Marine, even though I'm often the most left leaning guy in the room by a few orders of magnitude (despite being anti-abortion). Hopefully I can offer some insights on the active duty military mind, other timely military issues, and (probably) music and video game musings. Onward to the X25!
The X25 grenade launcher is the Army's latest and greatest in the evolution of tossing small explosives at people. We've been doing this for years, but this current model has the near-magic ability to set a variable fuse and then explode. Variable fuses have been used in explosives since the start and come in a wide variety of modern forms. The most "variable" is the radar fuse which uses a small radar radar sensor to am and detonate at a specified distance above ground level. Other fuses can be either mechanically or electronically adjusted, but often to only two or three settings. Useful, but what the X25 does is a significant improvement.
With the X25 a soldier can quickly and accurately target and engage an enemy behind cover at an unknown distance. Previously the soldier's options were to hand throw a grenade, use a M203 grenade launcher, or wait until the enemy popped up like an old shooting gallery and engage (the MK19 and other crew served weaponry is omitted). Now we add a fourth option: shoot an airbursting grenade at them.
Prior generation grenade launchers required a fair amount of skill to employ. The soldier must first ascertain the distance to the target and then accurately throw or shoot their grenade, and somehow doing this without getting shot themselves. Oh, and if it's thrown you have to hope the enemy doesn't toss it back. The X25 takes care of the accuracy portion and greatly aids in the employment portion. A range finder can find the distance to the enemy position (while the soldier remains largely in cover). Employment is now point-and-shoot, with the possibility of a range-adjusted reticle (admittedly my knowledge of the weapon details are slim). Result: the enemy hides behind cover, we shoot a grenade over, around, or through the cover to kill the bad guy.
At first glance this may lead one to believe that cover will no longer be effective on the battlefield. Not true. Cover and concealment will remain a critical element to infantry success. Now, however, it will not be enough to find a good piece of cover and wait. The enemy combatant must continue moving, exposing himself to further fire. This is, overall, probably a good thing. For one, it's extremely difficult to move and shoot simultaneously, even at a walking pace on a short range immobile target. From an offensive perspective, an opponent running for cover is likely predictable and can be led with fire fairly simply.
The biggest impact isn't the reduction of cover stability, but rather the tempo increase that brings to the battlefield. The shrinking time between initial contact and lethal engagement will shrink significantly, as will the ammunition required to reach that lethal engagement. Additionally, a single soldier with the X25 can rapidly and accurately engage multiple targets before the need to reload is reached (and that reloading is accomplished with a magazine). This is how the US likes to fight, legeraging a technological advantage to force and win rapid engagements with sudden, overwhelming force.
This will absolutely not bring a sudden end to any conflict, just as every great technological leap in killing each other has failed to do so. Rather it will make the individual engagements much shorter and that speed is what will change things for the better. The more the enemy has to react to us, the better our odds of both survival and mission success are.
So that's that! If you've used any of these weapons (or have anything else relevant to add) toss it in. Also if there's any questions you want answered from the military perspective send them my way, just be understanding if I say I can't really answer.