Re: colonial weapons

John Atkinson wrote:

>Sure.	And if it's in service in a mere decade, I'll
>eat my hat.  That thing has enough bells and whistles
>to guarantee that it will NEVER be maintainable by
>real live soldiers, and besides it weighs 24 lbs.

Er... John? You seem to have mixed up two different weapons which both
LRFs 
to set the fuses of airburst grenades, or else you use a very variant of

the pound...

The OCSW (IIRC "Objective Crew-served Support Weapon", though it could
be 
"Objective Crew Served Weapon" instead) is a 25mm, tripod-mounted
weapon. 
The gun part of it - ie., not including the FCS, tripod etc. - weighs
about 
24 lbs.

The OICW, or "Objective Infantry Combat Weapon", is the 5.56mm/20mm
combo 
weapon. It currently (as in "existing prototypes") weighs "only" a
little 
over 8 kg. "Measures are being introduced" to reduce this to less than 7
kg 
- which is only slightly more than a loaded M14A1. Heavy, yes, but
soldiers 
have managed weights like this and worse before.

Now, whether either of these weapons will actually work as advertised is

somewhat debatable. Those 20mm and 25mm grenades are *tiny* - unless the
US 
have made revolutionary advances in high explosives lately, neither
would 
seem to have powerful enough grenades to defeat today's modern body
armour.

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."