#OICW

Remember the US ARMY’s OICW competition back in the 90s? Well apparently South Korea has continued to develop their own version. S&T K11 DAW (Dual-barrel Air-burst Weapon) is the modern version and my friend Uk Yang test fired it.

China’s People’s Liberation Army Ground Force (PLAGF) has equipped elements of its special operations forces with the QTS-11 infantry integrated combat system. The system includes China’s QTS-11/ZH-05 integrated rifle and 20mm grenade launcher.

Thanks to my friend and the Royal Malaysian Navy for letting me use these photos. My friend was invited onto the Malaysian Navy base and got a chance to not only photograph this rare gun but also shoot it.

It’s almost 3 in the morning, and I’m lying awake in bed thinking about small arms. I’m trying to put everything out of my mind so I can go to sleep and wake up in the morning, go to the range, and bring you some raw ballistic data. So of course what pops into my head is an almost complete article about just why the Army’s latest whizzbang rifle program is doomed to collapse in a heap. All I have to do is write it.

At the 2017 Association of the United States Army annual meeting (AUSA 2017), US Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (RDECOM) presented a concept for the US Army’s future soldier of the 2030 timeframe, which promised everything from powered exoskeletons, to futuristic optics, to individual network capability. I captured the Command’s two future soldier concept demo videos that were running at the conference, embedded below:

North Korea recently celebrated its national holiday, the Day of the Sun, commemorating the birth of the founder of the communist hermit-nation, Kim Il-Sung. In true communist fashion, the holiday was marked by a large military parade where all the latest North Korean hardware was on display, including several new ballistic missiles, the latest North Korean tanks and artillery pieces, and of course small arms as well. Notably, the North Korean People’s Army brought a new combined assault rifle/grenade launcher to the parade, in the style of the cancelled US Objective Individual Combat Weapon.

In a new twist to the ongoing story of the US Army’s XM25 CTDE “Punisher” airburst infantry grenade launcher, Orbital ATK, a technology partner on the program, has sued fellow partner Heckler & Koch for failure to deliver 20 units of the new weapon. Orbital ATK is seeking more than $27 million in damages from H&K, and transfer of some intellectual property to another contractor. Orbital ATK says that Heckler & Koch’s failure to deliver the weapons has jeopardized its contract with the US government, raising the chance of program termination, and at least causing a substantial delay.

In May of this year, I got the rare opportunity to travel to Heckler & Koch’s headquarters in Ashburn, VA, to take a look at some of the experimental and prototype firearms they have located there in their famous “Grey Room”. It wouldn’t be worth as much for me to just tell you about it and to snap a few foggy cell phone pictures, though, so I brought along Othais of C&Rsenal to help me take high resolution light box photos of these unique and rare firearms.

The US Army’s “Punisher” XM25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement (CTDE) weapon program is in danger, says a report released earlier this week by the Department of Defense Inspector General’s office. The program has been riddled with delays and cost spirals, as well as three accidents in 2013, but beyond that the Army has failed to outline a plan for procurement and basic issuance of the weapon, putting the program in jeopardy. From the (heavily redacted) report:

South African defense firm Denel Praetoria Metal Pressings (PMP) have announced a new project for a derivative of their radical 20mm PAW handheld semiautomatic cannon. The new weapon will reportedly be tripod-mounted, fully automatic, and compatible with the same 20x42mmB (belted) explosive ammunition used by the handheld version. Denel PMP is advertising a rate of fire for the new machine cannon of about 200 rounds per minute; via defenceweb.co.za:

Up for auction through Rock Island Auction Company is a rifle that is very significant to the history of the military .22 caliber rifle cartridge. Below are pictures of the rifle, an experimental M1 Garand chambered for the .22-06 Duplex caliber which was a part of the SALVO II test conducted in December of 1957:

Photos have appeared online showing a new combination rifle from China. Like the XM-29 OICW, it combines an assault rifle (chambered in China’s standard 5.8mm round) with a semi-automatic 20mm airburst grenade launcher. The below weapon appears to have be built upon a Type-03 rifle.

It looks like Poland is developing their own version of the XM29 OICW concept, according to the MSPO 2008 website. It may or may not be called the “Neon”, Google translate is not great at best of times.