If I had to guess what science-fiction weapon of war would be most likely to pop up in the real world, the Bolter from “Warhammer 40,000” would be low on my list. After all, this futuristic firearm chambers .75-caliber rounds and can only be fired by the barely human mutants of the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines. (Smaller versions are commonly carried by other folks, though.) In the new “Space Marine 2” video game, players get to punch through massive bugs and heavily armored space wizards with these things.
Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. In reality, the U.S. Army is actually eyeing a new weapon for grenadiers that fires an even larger round, 30mm (or 1.18-caliber); is semi-automatic; and can hit targets between 35 meters and 500 meters away, even behind cover. Both the real and fictional weapons have multiple round types, including exploding rounds.
The Space Marines would be proud.
The Army's Precision Grenadier System (PGS) seeks to destroy enemies behind cover, a major problem dating back to bows and arrows. One solution to this problem is the grenadier. Infantry soldiers who can fire exploding rounds through windows or other openings, usually with an impact fuse so it explodes when it hits a wall or the floor or whatever. But here’s a wrinkle: It's really hard to hit some targets with a grenade with an impact fuse. If there's no wall right behind the defender, or the ground is soft, or any of a hundred other variables, then a grenadier is hard-pressed to get a lethal explosion to happen close to the enemy.
What would fix this problem? A system where the grenadier can set a round to go off at any point in space, preferably quite quickly and with the ability to fire repeatedly if the first shot doesn't finish the job.
Enter the PGS.
In October, gunmaker Barrett Firearms showed off its entry in the PGS competition, the Squad Support Rifle System (SSRS), at the annual Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) conference and exposition in Washington, D.C. -- and this thing definitely resembles a Bolter.
Barrett describes the system this way:
Key to the Barrett SSRS’s design is its user-friendly, assault-rifle-based structure. The weapon features a butt stock at the rear, an [sic] five rounds ammunition magazine in the center, and a barrel length of 305mm. The grenade launcher is compact and versatile with an overall length of 861mm and weighing just 6.3kg. It can fire various ammunition, including airburst rounds, giving soldiers a crucial advantage on the battlefield.
(It’s worth noting that the SSRS isn’t the only potential competitor for the Army’s PGS program: Firearms manufacturer FN America showed off a model of its PGS-001 design at last year’s AUSA exposition.)
Now, luckily for our modern infantry, there's no need for super soldier muscles to use the SSRS. But unfortunately, this isn't the Army's first attempt at something like this -- and I got to witness the last entry in Afghanistan personally.
I was a young public affairs sergeant assigned to an airborne brigade combat team, and we had one Stryker battalion attached to us that got the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System, commonly known as the “Punisher.” It was similar to the SSRS, but it carried a smaller round at 25mm or .98-caliber, closer to the Bolter. When it worked, it really worked: Shooters used a laser to gauge distance to a target, told the weapon how much farther the target was behind the cover, then fired. The round flew past the cover, detonated at the specified distance and generally ruined people's days.
But it was expensive; each round cost $1,000 and was expected to drop to $35 or so in full production. And the system frequently failed. I photographed a sergeant major firing it in a "familiarization shoot” and something like eight rounds failed in a row. A military police soldier and I slowly counted the shots as I took photos, marking each time that another two weeks of our pay had gone downrange and failed to explode.
It was worse on patrols, where troops couldn't count on the weapon in tough fights. It was risky to break cover to fire the weapon when it might take five or even 10 shots to get the burst. They obviously tried, but the troops in contact reports would come across the brigade chat system, saying that they'd expended 10 or 20 rounds for zero enemy casualties. It’s no wonder the Army eventually abandoned the CDTE effort in 2018.
The new SRSS looks less complicated, but it'll take time to get feedback from the field. Are these the first-generation Bolters that future Space Marines will carry into the stars? Or another XM25, a weapon that briefed well but couldn't do the job in combat? Only time will tell.
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