The XM25 Counter Defilade Targeting Engagement System — which shoots 25-mm grenades just past cover — is finally deploying to Afghanistan. Only a few prototypes are heading over now, but that should change:
The Army plans on purchasing more than 12,500 XM25 systems at about $25,000 to 35,000 apiece starting in 2012, which will be enough to put one in each of the Army’s infantry squads and Special Forces teams, according to Lehner.
I hope somebody is thinking about how to keep these out of the hands of the enemy. Maybe a password that has to be reset every day or at least every week?
While I certainly don’t want our enemies to get their hands on high-tech weapons, is an XM25, with its small number of precisely placed mini-grenades, a greater threat, in terrorist hands, than a mortar or machine-gun?