Each Heckler & Koch-made 25mm round actually holds two warheads that pack more punch than the current 40mm grenade launchers. Warfighters would basically have immediate, long-distance explosive firepower in rifle form, as opposed to having to wait on mortar strikes, artillery or airstrikes.
All that high-tech gadgetry earned the XM-25 one of PopSci’s Best of What’s New awards for 2009, but it doesn’t come cheap, at US$25,000 per weapon. Still, that may prove more cost-effective for rooting out embedded enemies compared to relying upon expensive Hellfire missiles fired from Apache attack helicopters.
Army plans call for full production start in 2012 and an initial buy of 12,500 XM-25s. Until then, warfighters might get dumbed-down sense of such a weapon’s effectiveness by playing with the detonate-upon-command grenade launcher in Halo: Reach.
[via Military.com]
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