Dvergar wrote:
Aestu wrote:
eventually insurgents will find cheap and effective ways of fooling whatever mechanisms it uses to find its target.
It's target finder is a laser range finder. It likely does the computations to find the time it will take for the projectile to reach the target then loads the information into the grenade. There could easily be a safety in place that the shell will not load if it did not leave the barrel. Even if the insurgents were able to defeat that technology (giant magnets?!?!) you can still just fire the damn thing like a traditional grenade launcher.
The article implied it uses more than one tracking system, and safeties - especially electronic safeties - can fail. Even more so if it's designed with a manual override.
Systems that are more complex are inherently less reliable.
Dvergar wrote:
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Never mind that the that soldiers will prefer conventional weapons just because they're less likely to have some sort of defect in one of its many components that results in the thing blowing up in their faces.
"conventional weapons" still jam and still have the potential to explode. The article lists one per squad, so it's not like everyone is going to be using one. I can guarantee that if it doesn't get anyone killed and actually kills an insurgent soldiers will use it and will want it.
This isn't a jam-immune laser rifle that happens to have some other flaw unique to a different weapon class. This is a conventional weapon saddled with a complex electronic system. In other words, the existing rate of failure is being exponentially compounded.
Insurgents use AK47s, and they use them because they're reliable and user-friendly. An insurgent might putatively pick this thing up and shoot it off, but he won't have the means to service it nor access to its specialized ammunition. By the same token, its complexity makes it a liability in real-world conditions.
Dvergar wrote:
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This thing is just a sop for greedy defense contractors and nerds who think smart weapons can make war into a video game.
Actually, if successful it is an answer to the constant problem of enemies in cover, the kind of problem people have been trying to solve for centuries.
This is merely a more sophisticated means of solving that problem in the same way it's been solved for centuries: if there's a wall and bad guys are on the other side, lob something over it.
Ancient people had peltasts.
The Brits had the longbow.
The Turks had cannons.
Modern people use grenades or airstrikes.
This isn't a new beast, it's just a new way of lobbing grenades over walls. Show me the pitching machine that can outperform Sammy Sosa...or even most competent baseball players...and I'll believe this thing can outperform a grenadier.
Usdk wrote:
if they're going to spend that much money on a weapon they might as well just napalm targets.
More or less this...there's more effective ways to spend that cash. I think most troops would prefer another soldier to cover their back rather than an overly complex gun.
