What is the wave of the future for military individual weapons?

R

Ruben Nasser

New member
As posted here in TFL before, the new high tech infantry "rifle", the Objective individual Combat Weapon's (OICW)schedule have slipped again, the US Army is now planning initial issue to troops in 2009.
There is a lot of talk on this issue now, and I know the weight, price, delicate parts, battery dependency, and overall awkwardness of the current prototypes will make some people dismiss this weapon, but there is the undeniable fact that "something" has to be done to improve the "individual weapon" (it may not be a rifle in the future). The state of the art of these weapons have been almost stagnant for 40 years (and even more in other small arms), with only small evolutive changes and improvements in sigth systems. An effective rifle, loaded with metalic cartridges and smokeless powder (...and the development of the machine gun) was the last major breakthrough. It's time for a new one. Would it be acomplished in ten years from now? ...nobody knows, but you can bet everybody will keep on trying. What are the main features/characteristics you think small arms will have in the future? Maybe is related to the very interesting thread on the best "all around" military cartridge (my vote goes for the 6mm SAW).
Even though the "inteligent" air ammo seems very interesting, I think there is a need for increasingly more selective target adquisition/destruction devices (on all kind of weapons, not only small arms). One of the easily achieveable technologies now is a much improved optical sight. I think we should keep the iron sights mounted(with some means for correct eye alignment once the scope is removed), and have the optical sight on a sturdy and quick-detach mount. This sight could have variable power (2.5-10X), laser rangefinder with digital display inside the scope, and a self-adjusted illuminated reticle with mil-dots to back up the range finder. The point of impact could be automatically or manually adjusted. This kind of sight would be most usefull at fairly long ranges (more than 200m), and thus issued to only a few soldiers, while most would have a fixed version (about 3X) without the laser rangefinder, and a selection of electronic reticles (with a default one not depending on battery power).
Other technologies like night vision and specially thermal imaging are still too expensive to issue on a general level, but no doubt will be used more and more in the future.
What do you think about the future of small arms ammo? I think we are reaching the height of the concept of ever increasing large amounts of ammo being carried by the soldier; if we can improve on target adquisition and hit probability we can carry less ammo and still be more effective. How does this affects the future of the light machine gun and SAW?
One of the main problems is in the future the
soldiers are going to be overburdened with a backpack, rifle with optical sight, some sort of grenade launcher (or "inteligent" air ammo?), spare ammo and mags, blade, maybe backup handgun, some electronic gizmos, night sight, GPS, and increasingly more effective (...and a bit heavy/bulky/uncomfortable) helmet and body armor. all this will have to be balanced against agility, to avoid being "high-tech sitting ducks".
 
Gotta ask, and this is NOT a flame, but have you ever been in the military? There is a saying, called KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Most infantry men don't need, or want, all this gee-wiz stuff, because batteries are heavy, they are complex to operate/maintain, are easily defeated with countermeasures, and they break because Murphy rules the battlefield. Your average infantryman would rather have extra ammo or a lighter pack then all this stuff. Body armor is a good idea, and I think caseless ammo is also a good idea, but because they follow the KISS rule.



[This message has been edited by BB (edited August 28, 2000).]
 
The OICW is a really crackpot idea. The thing is absurdly bulky and is an obvious attempt to have a one size fits all situation. Squads would be better off with a dedicated grenadier who has a dedicated grenade launcher than this POS.

Armor and assisted movement devices are a much better investment than this junk.

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The Alcove

I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
BB, I did basic training in one of the most primitive armies you can think of, so of course I'm not an expert. I love the KISS principle, but this thread is about the general concept of "future" individual military weapons. Some of the technology involved may not be reliable now, but it could be in a not so distant future. Maybe the idea of something like a scope sighted M4 was far fetched only 50 years ago.
 
I envision near-future infantry weapons as similar in configuration to modern weapons, but with improvements in ammo, ignition, optics, etc...
Within 20 years, you'll see an infantry weapon that fires either caseless ammo or plastic-cased ammo, to reduce weight. Magazines will also be made of polymer, as will a great deal of the gun itself. I think you'll also see titanium construction come into play in the military rifle.
I expect electric ignition to become de rigeur in that same time period.
As for sights, there will be something along the lines of a Reflex or Aimpoint sight standard on all rifles, SAWs and LMGs, possibly built into the carry handle on rifles.
The guns will continue to become more modular, and each soldier will be able to add night vision, grenade launchers (probably mag-fed and repeating) etc to his rifle in the field with no additional mounting equipment necessary.
I also expect to eventually see the fruition of the idea of a camera in the gunsight linked to a reticle in the soldier's helmet.
All the electronic gear will be non-essential though---that is, there will be non-electronic backups that allow the weapons to be used if the electronics fail.
 
I think we have reached the level where there will be no more major improvements until there is a major technology breakthrough.

I'm not sure that an improved cartridge 6mm SAW or any other would significantly enhance our combat capability. I think that is just tweaking what we have.

The OICW is just a modern attempt to make 30 year old ideas work. Anyone ever heard of the SPIW (Special Purpose Individual Weapon)? Look at it and look at OICW and see if you detect any similarities.

Big revolutionary advances in technolgy, those that signifcantly changed tactics and doctrine were: the matchlock, the flintlock, the rifled barrel (although it was a generation before advances were made in rifling and loading techniques before the additional range and accuracy rifles provided outweighed the speed of loading of the smoothbore musket), the percussion cap ignition, the repeater (once again it was a generation before industry was able to produce reliable brass cased ammunition in sufficient quantity to make the repeater better then the rifled musket), smokeless powder, the machine gun, and the assault rifle (carbine sized intermediate power cartridge select fire).

I think caseless ammo will probably be the next big advance. The question is; Will it be enough of an advantage to make a wholesale change over viable? I personally don't think so.

BB is right on the simplicity issue. Well trained motivated soldiers armed with M16s, SAWs and M240 machine guns will beat an Army armed with the OICW in it's current and projected state every time. I think it is a good test of future technology, but until there are some major breakthroughs it's going to contiue to be too heavy, too expensive and too fragile. The best we can hope for is that what we learn from this will be able to be applied to the next generation of weapons (beyond OICW).

Jeff
 
I agree with the KISS scenario. The more complex systems like the OICW will be failure prone, heavy, and awkward. Give the soldiers basic weapons reliable under any conditions and electronics for comm, intel, threat assessment, etc. An enormous amount of geographical and intelligence data can be stored and accessed by a small computer layered on the inside of a helmet. Ever look at a circuit board of a PC? except for the power supply & hard drive, it is thin (silicon memory can replace a GB hard drive)

For reasonable future combat scenarios read INVASION by Eric L. Harry.

M-16 w/ M-249 40mm grenade launcher mounted under the barrel.

Ceramic helmets with integrated electronics package consisting of screen and mic on a boom, headphones under armored ear flaps, and a wire running to a battery and receiver on the shoulder of the webbing. Point man wearing a miniature videocam and transmitter.

Attached to a platoon: a 2-man machine gun crew and a 2-man all-threat missle crew.
 
2-man MG crew is a bad idea, unless you're talking a SAW. With Medium and Heavy MGs, you need one to carry the tripod, one to carry the gun (more if you're talking heavy guns - the M2HB .50 is 80 lbs WITHOUT the tripod) and at least one for ammo. You really need that 3rd man (at least) to hump the ammo and provide rear security.
 
I've seen several programs on the History channel discussing this very issue. Most experts offering an analysis of this subject believe that the modern individual firearm is pretty much maxed out for advances. It's pretty hard to improve upon, using bullets & powder, the current crop of guns out there. Of course, there'll be improvements in sights & possible materials that weapons are made of such as carbon fiber barrels & such, but we are at the peak with current technology. What they're looking to do next is something with lasers or particle weapons. I've seen that new weapon that's being proposed & I have to say, that I'm glad I got out of the military before I had to carry that thing around. It looks very heavy & awkward. I agree with the better sights & caseless ammo would be the best thing to do with a projectile weapon like an M16. Even the current crop of M203's are more awkward to operate than the old M79.

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I found the reference to what machine gun that two man team was humpin'. An M-60. Both those guys were described as HUGE, with one being an "Animal"
 
I used to be the gunner on a M60E3 and we used to run two man teams. This was more due to lack of manpower than anything else. Doctrine calls for 3. Rifles are individual weapons, as such they have to work. ALL THE TIME. So no electronic ignition(whats the point), no goofy sensitive laser gadgets, no batteries etc. We will see optical sights becoming the primary sighting system with simple mechanical backups. Hopefully we will see this sooner, rather than later. We will see incremental evolution and improvement with materials and design for both ammo and weapons, they will become lighter and stronger. I don't see any improvment in propellants, we could go to a modulated RDX based propellant like they use in tank cannons, but what's the point. You can only shift around the E=1/2MV^2 formula so much before recoil becomes unbearable or something breaks. We are looking at a max velocity threshold of about 4000-4500fps with normal propellants and full bore projectiles, and honestly that is more then adequate for the job at hand. Caseless ammo is good, but I think it is nothing revolutionary, it's just a little lighter than normal ammo, it doesn't provide any great advantage. Ceramics are going to make rifles more durable and easier to maintain but accuracy will not improve to any great degree nor will performance.
That being said, I think the next revolutionary advance with be in coil or railguns. Using electrical energy gives you a much higher limit on velocity (something on the order of just under 300,000 kilometers per second theoretically. But even consider 10,000 fps for a rifle the guys out at Rock Island have already exceeded this with a giant unit and a 4oz hunk of plastic back in the 80's. They must have made progress since then. I imagine that such things will first be fielded on tanks and planes, but it will evolve down to the infantry sooner or later. I think this is far more practical in the near term than either particle weapons or lasers. It's just the next evolutionary step for the projectile weapon. Semper Fi....Ken
 
Robotics. Instead of sending an armed human in, send in an individually controlled heavily armoured, heavily armed robot. Even if they're on cables to avoid problems with RF, it's better to be 200 yards back while the robot gets wailed on then to be there yourself.

Make them hovercraft. They could be roughly the size of an office desk, but half as high.
 
Well, I guess I should qualify what I said about 2-man GPMG teams. For a medium MG that's only going to be used from the bipod, you can get away with it. If you're dragging the tripod along, I don't think you can realistically carry a basic load of ammo, too (on top of helmet, flak, 782 gear, pack, personal weapon & ammo, 60mm mortar rounds, etc etc etc).

But back to the real topic.

I think a repeater version of the M-79 (as suggested above) would be a great addition to the fireteam. Either a pump action or with a rotary magazine that allowed for a cut-off to insert different types of grenades (smoke, WP, buckshot, etc).
 
I humped my spare barrel bag, and my A-gunner humped the tripod and his rifle plus about 300 rds. I had 100 in the gun plus 200. MG teams didn't have to carry mortar rounds or any of the other platoon gear(maybe a PVS4 for the gun). It was heavy, no joke, but could be done. Life really sucked sometimes, though :)
As for the grenade launcher thing, I mentioned this in the ammo thread, part 1. But I will deal with the ammo issues. I think that we only need a couple different types, because I never found time to play find the correct type of ammo, when I was under stress with the M203. So I say HEDP, WP/smoke, Illumination, and maybe CS should be it. WP/Smoke would be dual role screening and anti-personnel, but I'm not sure how much payload you could get in there. And for training it'd be a no-no. The buckshot rounds for the 40mm are a joke, you have the payload of a shotgun, with this huge cartridge. Better off with HEDP, because at close range the fuze doesn't arm and you have a very effective "elefant gun". Semper Fi....Ken
 
Bruegger,
When would you leave the tripod of your medium machine gun at home? When I was a rifle platoon sergeant, I always had my MG teams carry the tripod and use it. There aren't many instances where you use an M60 or M240 in the "assault" role.

I always aksed if "they" wanted to crawl under supporting fire that was fired off the bipod whenever the griping started. A good crew can have fire from the tripod nearly as fast as from the bipod and it's much more effective fire. Priority of manning always went to crew served weapons first. I always thought it was better to have a 3 man fire team then to have a 2 man machine gun crew.

As for a repeater version of the M203, I'm not sure how practical that would be given the size and weight of such a weapon. Yes the M203 is awkward to operate compared to the M79, but there is a lot of terrain that you can't use the grenade launcher in. (moderately heavy vegitation to jungle) The old Vietnam era XM148 was a three round repeater that mounted on an M16. I'm not sure that it worked to well. Perhaps we could perfect that design. I think a 40mm repeater would have the same probelm that the M79 had. The grenadier would not have any capability in terrain where he couldn't use the grenade launcher.

I've often wondered why we haven't developed breaching rounds off the 40mm platform. We are buying things like the "Rifle-launched Entry Munition" which looks like a fencing sword, is attached to and fired from the barrel of an M16 rifle or M4 carbine. It is designed to eliminate the doors or windows of a building from a distance of 10 to 30 meters. (this from the current issue of Infantry magazine)

I wonder why we are developing a stand alone muntion for that purpose when we already field two 40mm systems per squad?

Jeff
 
I apologize for not doublechecking Eric Harry's work or my own post. Obviously, upon finding out what an M-203 and an M-249 really are, I was wrong on the descriptions.

Nevertheless, the principle still applies. Basic weapons that will work regardless of the idiots they have using them or the climate, dust, mud or snow conditions.
 
Well, maybe in ten or twenty or more years "they" will come up with something more effective for the Grunt than what is now available.

From everything I've read about combat in Vietnam, and from what I know about coordinating movements of groups of people from point A to point B without anybody getting lost, improvements in personal communications would make most infantrymen more effective in the use of what they already have.

Whole novels are written by ex-military types which deal with the incredible amount of training for coordinated travel during adverse conditions.

Given the light weight of modern commo gear, it seems to me to be feasible that a Grunt have a GPS/computer-transceiver which would allow whatever level of leadership to know his position. HE could also know where he is with respect to the terrain and the others of his group--or be directed as necessary. Granted the units would be expensive, but they could be the size of today's cell phones, and it's off-the-shelf.

I saw in a newspaper today where Halliburton has a contract for some of the support efforts for the troops in Kosovo. $27,000 per man per year for whatever support they do. (There was a similar figure for Desert Shield/Desert Storm.) The additional cost of my magic commo gear seems like small potatoes, overall.

Regards, Art
 
Well, guys, just my 2 cents, but OICW seemed quite implausible to me. Not that the technology isn't there to make it do what it's supposed to do. Having seen the prototypes and illustrations and read some about its features, I couldn't help but think WHOEVER CAME UP WITH THIS MONSTROSITY HAS NEVER BEEN IN A FIRE FIGHT! Reliability and firepower are what you need. Not a high tech "Super Soaker" from a CAD/CAM program. For the average grunt, all these bells and whistles, alternative threat suppressors, electronics, etc. are useless when the s**t hits the fan. Where is the ILS concern for what is really going through this 18 yr. old's head as he is being shot at? First off he's scared s**tless and trying to keep his head down. Struggling to overcome his fear, he (and hopefully his buddies) return fire in an effort to suppress the threat. Adrenalin is giving him strength as the scene becomes surreal. Time compresses or expands as the noise level of battle in decibels becomes a shriek. He's thinking about two things only: kill the bastards and stay alive! Get this over with and get me the f**k out of here! Am I too cynical here, guys?
 
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