Tag tactics

XM-25 “Punisher”: Not Dead Yet

"Bring out your dead!" Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
“Bring out your dead!” Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

As I mentioned recently, the U.S. Army is in the process of deciding whether or not to proceed with the XM-25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System, a precision targeted, shoulder-fired 25mm grenade launcher. The Defense Department’s Inspector General’s office released a pointedly critical evaluation of the weapon nicknamed “the Punisher” in August. Among the negative reviews the report cited was one from the Army Capabilities and Integration Center, directed by Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. McMaster’s office has had a change of heart about the XM-25 since that evaluation, however.

“My initial assessment from 2013 did not reflect 30 additional months of testing and improvements to the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System,” McMaster told Military.com in an email.

“The Army has worked closely with the system’s prime contractor to address the safety issues on the XM25 through engineering design changes and improvements to the system. Prototypes employed during two Forward Operational Assessments allowed the Army to learn from and correct system shortcomings, and feedback has been positive.”

The XM25 is not a simple grenade launcher, McMaster maintains. The sight has an integrated day/thermal sight, a laser range finder, and a ballistic computer working in unison to allow the shooter to effectively engage enemy targets under cover.

The weapon is semi-automatic with a five-round magazine that ensures effective fires and rapid re-engagement, as necessary, in all operational environments — jungle, urban, day/night, woodland, subterranean and desert, McMaster said.

“Worldwide urbanization, coupled with the extensive proliferation of rocket propelled grenades and machine guns, allowed our enemies to exploit our desire to end engagements with minimal collateral damage,” McMaster said.

“The XM25 provides an innovative capability that mitigates this vulnerability and minimizes operational risks facing our soldiers, limiting collateral damage in the surrounding area while allowing our dismounted squads to decisively end firefights.”

The Army has indicated that it will make a determination on the XM-25’s future by the end of September.

Will This Weapon Change Infantry Warfare Forever? [UPDATE]

XM-25 Counter-Defilade Engagement SystemIt appears that the Army’s XM-25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement System, a shoulder-fired 25mm grenade launcher, may not get the opportunity to fulfill its destiny as the Weapon That Will Change Infantry Warfare Forever after all.

Military.com reports that the Department of Defense’s Inspector General’s Office has recommended that the Assistant Secretary of the Army, Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, Katrina McFarland, “determine whether to proceed with or cancel the XM25 program after reviewing the results of the 2016 Governmental testing,” which will be completed this fall. The Army has indicated that it concurs with the recommendation.

The Army delayed acquisition funding and extended the XM-25’s development phase in 2014 in response to problems encountered during field testing and critiques of the weapon by the 75th Ranger Regiment and the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence. During a live-fire exercise in 2013, an XM-25 “experienced a double feed and an unintentional primer ignition of one of the 25mm high explosive rounds,” which fortunately, caused only minor injuries to the soldier testing it, but potentially could have been much worse.

More consequentially for the XM-25 program, the Rangers found that infantry squad soldiers assigned to wield it could not also carry a rifle due to the extra weight. This limited the ability of the XM-25 bearer to perform battle drills and deprived the squad of a rifle in close range combat. The XM-25 also quickly depleted all of its 36 rounds in action. As a result, the Rangers declined to use an XM-25 in an assault on a fortified compound in Afghanistan in 2013, on the grounds that the weapon’s limited utility did not justify leaving out an M4A1 carbine.

The DOD IG criticized the Army for not specifying the exact costs of the extended development and for declining to state how many XM-25s it is considering initially procuring. Stay tuned…

Learning From Defeat. Or Not.

British Mark III Tank in ditch, 1917 [Wikimedia Commons]
British Mark III Tank in ditch, 1917 [Wikimedia Commons]

Defence-in-Depth, the blog of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, is highlighting presentations from the Second World War Research Group’s recent “1940-1942: Fulcrum of the Twentieth Century Conference.”

An interesting contribution by Philip McCarty examined the creation of a committee by the War Office, chaired by retired general Sir George Bartholomew, to assess the lessons of British defeat in France in 1940. This quick and dirty effort resulted in a series of recommendations that varied in military validity, as well as acceptability within the British Army establishment. This is an interesting case study of the actual mechanics of evolution in warfare and how military establishments evaluate military experience. Implications of tactical success or failure are not necessarily readily apparent, nor is it always possible to act immediately on them when identified. Sometimes the right conclusions can still produce wrong solutions.

Trevor N. Dupuy argued that “the application of sound, imaginative thinking to the problems of warfare (on either an individual or an institutional basis) has been more significant than any new weapon.” The preconditions for successfully assimilating changes required:

  1. Imaginative, competent, knowledgeable leadership.
  2. Effective coordination of a nation’s economic, technological-scientific, and military resources.
  3. Opportunity for evaluation and analysis of battlefield experience.[1]

Successful change and innovation is both difficult and rare. It is seldom a smooth process.

NOTES

[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1980), pp. 338

Will This Weapon Change Infantry Warfare Forever? Maybe, But Probably Not

XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System

The weapon pictured above is the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) precision-guided grenade launcher. According to its manufacturer, Orbital ATK,

The XM25 is a next-generation, semi-automatic weapon designed for effectiveness against enemies protected by walls, dug into foxholes or hidden in hard-to-reach places.

The XM25 provides the soldier with a 300 percent to 500 percent increase in hit probability to defeat point, area and defilade targets out to 500 meters. The weapon features revolutionary high-explosive, airburst ammunition programmed by the weapon’s target acquisition/fire control system.

Following field testing in Afghanistan that reportedly produced mixed results, the U.S. Army is seeking funding the Fiscal Year 2017 defense budget to acquire 105 of the weapons for issue to specifically-trained personnel at the tactical unit level.

The purported capabilities of the weapon have certainly raised expectations for its utility. A program manager in the Army’s Program Executive Office declared “The introduction of the XM25 is akin to other revolutionary systems such as the machine gun, the airplane and the tank, all of which changed battlefield tactics.” An industry observer concurred, claiming that “The weapon’s potential revolutionary impact on infantry tactics is undeniable.”

Well…maybe. There is little doubt that the availability of precision-guided standoff weapons at the squad or platoon level will afford significant tactical advantages. Whatever technical problems that currently exist will be addressed and there will surely be improvements and upgrades.

It seems unlikely, however, that the XM25 will bring revolutionary change to the battlefield. In his 1980 study The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, Trevor N. Dupuy explored the ongoing historical relationship between technological change and adaptation on the battlefield. The introduction of increasingly lethal weapons has led to corresponding changes in the ways armies fight.

Assimilation of a significant increase in [weapon] lethality has generally been marked (a) by dispersion, thus reducing the number of people exposed to the new weapon in the enemy’s hands; (b) by giving greater freedom of maneuver; and (c) by improving cooperation among the different arms and services. [p. 337]

As the chart below illustrates (click for a larger version), as weapons have become more lethal over time, combat forces have adjusted by dispersing in greater frontage and depth on the battlefield (as reflected by the red line).

[pp. 288-289]

Dupuy noted that there is a lag between the introduction of a new weapon and its full integration into an army’s tactics and force structure.

In modern times — and to some extent in earlier eras — there has been an interval of approximately twenty years between introduction and assimilation of new weapons…it is significant that, despite the rising tempo of invention, this time lag remained relatively constant. [p. 338]

Moreover, Dupuy observed that true military revolutions are historically rare, and require more than technological change to occur.

Save for the recent significant exception of strategic nuclear weapons, there have been no historical instances in which new and more lethal weapons have, of themselves, altered the conduct of war or the balance of power until they have been incorporated into a new tactical system exploiting their lethality and permitting their coordination with other weapons. [p. 340]

Looking at the trends over time suggests that any resulting changes will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The ways armies historically have adapted to new weapons — dispersion, tactical flexibility, and combined arms —- are hallmarks of the fire and movement concept that is at the heart of modern combat tactics, which evolved in the early years of the 20th century, particularly during the First World War. However effective the XM25 may prove to be, it’s impact is unlikely to alter the basic elements of fire and movement tactics. Enemy combatants will likely adapt through even greater dispersion (the modern “empty battlefield“), tactical innovation, and combinations of countering weapons. It is also likely that it will take time, trial and error, and effective organizational leadership in order to take full advantage of the XM25’s capabilities.

[Edited]

Kursk Book Availability

Kursk

Amazon.com is now charging $275 for my Kursk book. For some reason, they had always discounted it to below list price. Last week, the discounted ended and it now cost well above list price. We have no say in what Amazon.com does or does not do. We have watched the odd price fluctuations on the book prices there with considerable bemusement.

It is available from Aberdeen Bookstore at the list price of $195. If you click on the image of the book to the right of this post then it will lead you there.

The link is: Aberdeen Bookstore