To expand on what XPav said, regarding the OICW’s cost.
M16 = $1,000.
OICW (M29) = $10,000.
People in support of the OICW come up with all sorts of crazy ways to bloat the price of an m16 up to about 30 thousand, claiming it needs 29 thousand dollars worth of attachments to work properly, but really folks, let’s be serious here…
My impression from the feature on the Discovery channel is that the computer and sighting mechanism that fuses the grenade shells are completly separable from the machine gun portion.
It looked to me like if the battery goes dead, you lose the smart explosive shells, but you still have a handy machinegun.
How about Metal Storm.
http://www.metalstorm.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s34605.htm
It fires more than one million rounds per minute.
You paying for those million rounds? How are you going to get those to the battlefield?
The best gun in history is utterly useless if
What happens if it gets dropped in the mud? With the m-16 you just wash the mud out and go on. Hell with the ak-47 you just knock most of the mud off and keep going.
Metalstorm might have its uses. It’d make a good point defense against missiles, especially on ships. And it would make a terrifying ‘bouncing betty’ type of mine that would obliterate a swath back half a mile.
I think those are AK’s, the most wide spread rifle in the world BTW…a cite regarding its distribution…
Yeah I know it doesn’t nesacerily(sp?) mean thats what’s being used against us, but the only weapon I see(news footage) the bad guy’s using is the AK, so thats my WAG…
OP are you talkin’ desert siege?on-line? because I dont see it …
newbie gamer here…
There are serious problems with Metalstorm. Its not practical.
Ammo issue aside, do a little bit of physics to figure out the force needed to hold that gun to the deck… You’re going to need at least a 20mm round to definitely kill an ASM. Smaller, and you’re still going to have your tin can hit by fast moving maybe exploding bits of ASM, which isn’t going to make your day very happy.
Even then, future ASMs are probably going to make some random high G manuevers during their terminal attack phase, which, well, plays havoc with gun firing solutions.
Missiles work better. The US Navy is moving towards RAM. Longer reach, more accurate, better effect.
There was a really cool article on that weapon in Popular Science (over a year ago, I believe)…
What yojimboguy said is ringing a few bells in my head, too. Although I think what I read about was about a combination machinegun / shotgun, the two parts being detachable from one another… I remember that because it was shortly after I saw the Starship Troopers movie, and the soldiers all carried what looked like the bastard child of an automatic shotgun and an assault rifle.
It is in the original GR as well as both expansion packs. You need to unlock the specialists by completing the Special Objective on each mission. That will unlock a specialist that comes with thier own gun. Only that specialist can use the special gun. Once you unlock a specialist though, you can use thier gun online as well.
Very badass game and the representation of this OICW seems like it is dead on in performance and look.
FTR, you need to unlock the MG3 and M-60 support guns. They are badass.
I would be quite worried about reliability of the gun. Battlefields have a habbit of taking the optimal conditions and doing the opposite, and problems of that type are rarely seen until some unfortunate troops stumble into them.
Since the US is decidedly favoring two types of attack formations (massive mechanized infantry moves, a la Desert Storm, and insertion/combined arms, a la Vietnam and Afghanistan), I don’t think the higher ups are basing their new weapon specs on prolonged patrols where units can be in the field for extended periods of time without resupplying, and if they are, resupply missions are fairly regular these days, since we can get air supremacy fairly easily and airdrop supplies. Unfortunately, I think that reliance on everything working right is the weak point in our military planning.
OICW and other weapons are great for the “commando” type missions we’ve been doing a lot of recently. Lots of firepower accurately… but if we get slogged down into an all out long term ground battle in a city, what is the real advantage over a AK-74? The fight there is superior squad training versus superior terrain knowledge (and probably numbers).
Well, it shapes our foreign policy. If we know we need to capture a city, we’ve been enlisting local rebels to be the meat while we provide supporting fire. I just think that our planning may backfire badly in the wrong situations. It has, several times.
I was good friends with the the Alliant Tech program director for the OICW and have fired it. The recoil is not much different than an M16. It is very cool, but to me it is very awkward feeling. Like holding a 2 X 8 piece of lumber. It was still in test stages when I fired it, so it was a bit closer to 20 pounds. The final weight when fielded was expected to be reduced to about 15 pounds, which is just a tad more than a 203. The idea is to replace not simply the M16 but the M203. This one does similar damage to a 40mm grenade, with much greater accuracy, about 5 times the range of a 203, and the very cool airburst.
See some guys run behind a wall, you lase the wall and it sets the fuze for that distance. If they move, you simply re-lase the next target and the shell is re-fuzed. A short time delay safes the fuze if it hasn’t been fired. The biggest worry was protecting the sighting system but with components getting cheaper and smaller, I don’t that is nearly as big an issue as it was a few years ago. And even then, it took a lot of abuse while being put through the standard evironmental tests like vibration, high/low temperatures, dust, humidity, freefall drops, etc. I think it will be fielded, but not in quite so many numbers, perhaps one weapon per squad. New weapons with new ammo is bound to lead to logistics trouble in a hurry. But Alliant makes great ammunition, and HK makes top line guns, even though most of them feel like a block of wood to me.
It’s a cool gun, and could be an excellent field weapon, especially for urban areas if they make sure to get any bugs out before it’s fielded rather than waiting for field reports, and they get maintainers and supply systems on line first.
As far as the cost, it is a lot more expensive than a basic 203 system. But to bring the capabilites of a 203 to that of an OICW, does in fact drive the price up to around 25,000 and you still wind up with an inferior system.