Interesting idea - definitely improve lethality and jitters. I wonder what they plan to do about the recoil? A 20mm fired from the shoulder would have some serious kick.

There's certain other advantages -- like detonating one over a guy's head when he's behind a wall or in a trench and you can't get a direct shot at him.

As far as accuracy goes, that's a double-edged sword. Sure, our guys shoot 20 percent if you believe the numbers. But they're the best-trained, best equipped troops in the world. That's six hits out of a 30 round mag under combat conditions against an enemy that's dodging and trying to kill you. Twenty percent is pretty darned good if the other guy's even more scared and shooting single digits because he's facing huge volumes of fire from an enemy that has him far outclassed and outgunned.

Col David Hackworth once said, "Efficiency doesn't win wars -- redundancy does."

[ This Message was edited by: expatriate on 2003-02-20 22:20 ]

Yeah I wondered about the kick too, Saskie. That is a hell of a slug to be launching at high velocity from the shoulder. Perhaps they do something with the sides of barrel so there is less resistance and maybe the bullet is very light.

Good point on the importance of relative accuracy when in combat, Ex. I guess you weren't at the pentagon meeting when they decided to develop the XM29, which is too bad since you could have saved the military some $$$. Each rifles estimated cost is in the ball park of $10k and each "exploding bullet" comes in at around 25 bucks...

Consider that! A day at the range, say 100 rounds of practice fire, and each troop shoots up $2500.