XM-29 XM-30

[Dennis G]

...

[Knave]

The OICW? Yeah, it'll be a good weapon... if it's reliable.

If it has problems, though, all those cool features will just make it a really expensive club in combat ;)

[Dennis G]

it looks badass i think it will be reliable

[Knave]

it looks badass i think it will be reliable

Looks aren't everything. It wouldn't be the first time something was bought for the military on the basis of how it looks in testing, only to find it's useless in the field due to design or technical flaws.

It's still in development, we've got at least 4-5 years to see what they come up with.

[GearGod]

Read this, if unavailable, check back later: http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/Quarters/2116/oicw.htm

[Mal3]

Reading about the SEAL fiasco at Panama Airport still makes me angry. Needlessly endagering elite soldiers by making a stand off mission into a Hollywood shootout.

[Shadow]

Hey!
It's made in Germany!
It can't be bad!

[nathan_w_l]

The OICW in its current state and all the enhanced models that I have seen are about as useful in combat as a clarinet.

The assault rifle portion of the weapon has a barrel that is much to short to be ballistically effective. The fire control system is much to complicated for use in combat where seconds and even miliseconds can mean the difference between life and death. the weapon is heavy and unwieldly, as well as completely un ergonomic. With it's height it will be rather difficult to fire from the ****e possition. It is much to expensive to field to every rifleman and granadier, or even just one granadier per squad. If the weapons sighting system is damaged it does not have readily available back up iron sights.


The M-4 carbine with it's 14.5 inch barrel hardly produces enough muzzle velocity to have effective terminal ballistics, the proposed 7 inch barrel the XM-29/OICW won't even produce the required 2400 fps to force a M-855 round to fragment which is what makes it a lethal round

Point being it is a good Idea but extremely poor execution at this point. it will never see the field its self but the technology that comes out of it may some time in the distant future. yes I know it's officially slated to come into service in 2008 but I guarantee it never will.

ps. the incident involving Norieaga's jet at the airport was much more a problem with communications (commo between the SEALs on the ground and the AC-130 spectre was never established which left them with no air support), stove piped mission planning, Rules Of Engagement, as well as many other factors. The SEALs weren't even particularly suited to that mission. It was a cluster **** from the very beginning and the OICW would not have done anything that an AT-4 didn't already do.

[Mal3]

From what I've read the main culprit was planning best left to a Hollywood movie. There were 3 or 4 proposals as to how to do it and all were better than the one used.

One proposal involved renting a room overseeing the airport and the Lear Jet, a heavy caliber sniper/AMR weapon and plainclothed operators from SEALs taking out the jet if needed with precision fire from a distance. Not quite as action movie sounding but IMHO a sound plan.

[Knave]

The bulk of the weapon makes me leery as well; and, even though it's to be a grenadier's weapon and the grenadier is usually not the point man... I don't know. If you drop it in the mud and foul up the sights, or get mud in it, can you still use it or do you have a $10,000 club?

[FallenAngel]

I agree with Nathan on the pure basis of size alone, not counting all the other Murphy's Law potentials in a complicated thing like that.

In Iraq, every specialist, retired general, active corporal, everyone said the wars of tehe future would be urban...hardly any more conventional stuff that we're used to. That being said, why is the military so up on making this thing that's the size of a Mack Truck? The made the Para Minimi and the PDW Minimi for a reason...better in urban areas where size matters.

If anyone here has seen the movie "THe Pentagon Wars" you know exactly what I am talking about. One general somewhere thinks its a good Idea so the whole f*cking military has to jump in line behind him.

[a. enders]

I hear you,Angel.Something along the lines of "I'll back your OICW if you back my Super-Duper Thingamabob." Scratch each others backs.Sadly,that's how it all works for some reason.(Pardon the Thingymabob,don't know of any other super-duper whiz-bang weapons projects.)
Personally,I wouldn't trust any weapon that has more crap in it than I know how to repair.What's he gonna do?Carry around a Win98 bootdisk?

[Mal3]

I don't know if anybody here is into SciFi, but there was this great weapon in a great book named Snow Crash.

The weapon was a prototype of a suitcase NUCLEAR powered gatling hyper-velocity gun (probably railgun or such). They use the gun until the BETA software crashes. Lovely bit. The weapon was called Reason. As the character that has the weapon at one time says about a menacing fleet of pirate ships, "They gotta listen to Reason..." p-)

I'm probably thread-hijacking, aren't I?

[96B]

As to Patilla Airport incident, the Rangers are the best unit in our SOF arsenal to do that job, SEALs are best in very small numbers and when stealth is on their side. I think one of the original plans was to have snipers providing cover from a hotel nearby which would have helped tremendously with taking out the guys hiding in the hangars. They ended up getting caught on the open tarmac with no cover. Doesnt matter how elite our soldiers are, goat-****ed planning and piss poor support can lead to disaster.

I agree that the concept of the OICW is awesome but they just need to mineraturize it... I think the M4 is perfectly suited for SOF these days especially in urban environments. I especially love those DEVGRU M4s with the 10 inch barrels! woot

[Mal3]

Indeed, it's a nice concept. Version 1 (OICW) is a nice concept which probably will lead to a version 2. A good weapon.

[FallenAngel]

Amen Enders....

Just in case no one saw the movie, its about the production and trials of the (then new) M2 Bradley fighting vehicle....here's some of the more memorable quotes.

When told that the Bradley is to have a cannon along side it's machine guns, the colonel in charge defends this decision to the head designer as follows.

Designer: "You've already got 4,400 rounds of machine-gun ammo. Now you want 25 m.m. shells?"
Colonel: "General wants his ammo."
Designer: "He can't have his ammo. Not unless he runs alongside this thing carrying it."

And then, they were questioning the "look" of the IFV with the cannon, the designer voices concern.

Designer: "You go out onto a battlefield with this pecker sticking out of your turret (meaning the 25mm cannon) people are gonna think you're a tank and the enemy's gonna unload on you with all they got. Might as well paint a big red bull's-eye on the side."
Colonel: "But, it's a troop-carrier, not a tank."
Designer: "Do you want me to put a sign on it in fifty languages: "I am a troop-carrier, not a tank. Please don't shoot at me"?"

And finally (last one) when they finally satisfy the General's wishes, this is what they get (in the words of the designer):

Designer: "A troop-transport that can't carry troops. A reconnaissance vehicle that's too conspicuous to do reconnaissance. And a quasi-tank that has less armor than a snow-blower, but has enough ammo to take out half of D.C. "



AHHH the military Beauracracy...wonderful ain't it :D :fork:

[XASA]

The M4/M203 combination presently fulfills the need for an area and point fire individual weapon; however, once you add on telescopic, image intensifier or thermal sights, laser, flashlight and suppressor, it weighs more than what the OICW will weigh and costs twice as much. Also, anyone who has been issued a weapon that takes attachments knows they will at some point become loose or fall off. The OICW is still in R&D but, at this point in its development, looks like a solid piece of weaponry.

One would think that the Bradley's combat record to date would have silenced the naysayers who still think the HBO movie was factual. All weapon systems have teething problems, the Bradley has proven its developers had the right idea at the right time.

[FallenAngel]

No doubt XASA that the Bradley is one solid piece of machinery and a fine IFV (some would argue the best). I think the main point of the movie overall is to satirize the way in which the Army developes these new weapons...basically, it brings politics into the military and FUBARs alot of things that could have been fairly simple....some would say the OICW is a modern day example because it SEEMs to be the exact opposite in terms of what the soldier of the future will need :)

[BMF]

just some facts on the M29 project:
1: one of the requirements is that the entire system weigh less then the M16/M203 combo, and be no longer then 33 inches, which is shorter then an M16A2.

2: the barrel for the 5.56 half is 10-12 inches, not 7(10-12 depending on which R/D model). it's basically a modified and enhanced G36K made to U.S. specifications, and adapted for theM16 magazine. according to the project, the 5.56 half is to be 100% more lethal then the current M16A2

[Mal3]

Would they be using Lee Harvey Oswald bullet tech for it then? :cantbeli:

[yellowking]

I wouldn't be too down on it. "Technology is the Future," as the commercials say, and we have to stay ahead of the curve. We don't want to be AOL to China's MSN. Such projects in development are exactly what we need. If it works, we have a weapon that's twice as effective as our current weapons. If not, we will undoubtedly have learned something that we can then apply to a system that works or improves what we already have. More power to them, I say.

[FallenAngel]

true. If they can find a way to make the OICW smaller than an M4/203 combo, then it would be alot better. However, with all the gismos they want on it, they would be hard pressed to make it the same size, let alone smaller.

And as for a G36K being twice as lethal as an M16? I dont understand. Twice as new....twice as reliable....twice the quality.....sure. But twice as lethal? How exactly does one make a linear weapon twice as lethal? :D

[Bing]

does anyone know what the kinetic round is? and how is more effective than the current 5.56?

[yellowking]

And as for a G36K being twice as lethal as an M16? I dont understand. Twice as new....twice as reliable....twice the quality.....sure. But twice as lethal? How exactly does one make a linear weapon twice as lethal?
By increasing accuracy or damage, I would expect. Here's the quote I was referencing, from http://www.infowar.com/iwftp/cspinney/c133.txt. The page is down, but I saved the quote some time ago because it was an interesting fact:


Today, in the heat of battle, a soldier firing an M-16 at a target 1,000 feet
away has about a 15 percent chance of hitting it, Zimmerman said. With the
OICW, that should rise to 50 percent.
So, if the OICW is successful (according to this), it can be as much as 3x as accurate as the M-16. I'm not making any judgements on the odds of that (not in any way qualified to), it just appears to be a goal of the OICW.

[XASA]

The OICW/XM29's weight, cost and dependibility are in question but are being worked on. The segment on "Mail Call" mentioned how the final weapon would be smaller and lighter than the current one, about 16 pounds. Since it will cost approximately $10,000, it will be issued only to grenadiers-- one or two to a squad. There were a few mishaps in testing, most notably one of the 20mm HE rounds "cooked off" and burst the receiver, slightly wounding an unfortunate Army tester.

If it doesn't make the cut it won't be the first time a great conceptual firearm didn't measure up. The German G11, which used caseless ammunition, and was a radical leap in weapon technology, fell to the wayside after years of testing and improvements and the Germans went with the conventional G-36, which owes much of its design to the AR-18, which has been around for 40 years.

Anyone remember the SPIW program from 20 years ago? After extensive testing of several point and area fire concepts, it was found that the weapons tested only showed marginal improvement over the M-16/M203 combination, but not enough to warrant a new weapon system.

"Lessons learned" from Afganistan and Iraq have put the lethality of the 5.56mm round in question. Targets are hit but, even if the wound is lethal, many were still capable of returning fire. The counter-argument is 5.56mm allows for multiple hits and to keep shooting until your target is down.

Finally, give me a trained operator armed with an antiquated weapon-- even an old lever action Winchester-- over a poorly trained conscript armed with an modern automatic weapon. Witness the photos and video of American soldiers maintaining a good sight picture and a tight stock weld firing single shots compared to those of Iraqis and Afganis firing off 30 round bursts without aiming.

[Seiyuuki]

The OICW still have a couple more years of development to go, and the production model will not look like what it is right now, it will be lighter, smaller and better...also we go ample of time to work out all the kinks.

So it's kind of pointless to say "I seen the gun, I read about the gun, I heard about gun, etc...and...the barrel don't look right...it's too bulky...etc."

[BMF]

to restate it...
1: the 5.56 section of the M29 is BASED on the G36K.(they are both made by HK, so it makes good sense. HK took the G36K and improved it for the M29)
2: one of the requirements of the original OICW contract was 100% increase in lethality of the 5.56 section of the weapons system. this is achieved through various means, both within the actual 5.56 weapon and the optics package.