Supposed to be the future of American small arms

No, it's because H&K wouldn't ship the parts to ATK because they thought it violated some German law regarding "explosive" bullets
thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/07/20/orbital-atk-and-heckler-koch-settle-xm25-lawsuit/

The program was going fine until H&K suddenly decided that some ancient arms control treaty applied to it and halted their participation. No H&K, no program.

>is the AR lobby that powerful in the US?
The... What?
Tell you what, go ahead and buy a poverty pony AR and figure out for yourself why nothing has dethroned its military brother.

There will be no departure from the M16 platform until caseless ammunition is properly developed and even then they're going to try and make it work with AR lowers.
There, I said it.

Kraut space magic can work. Give them time.

Tried to solve a problem that does not really exist.

Except they aren't trying any more
Unless there's another project going on that I'm unaware of.

Blame the Senate, not the gun. It had its place and it was loved when it was used there, but the Senate sabotaged it so they could say "look it's not working out" and then cancel it.
PCT will be next. It's got the right mix of traditional and innovative and has some very nice features.

It’s airburst you dumbass, that makes it much easier to hit enemies when they’re behind cover and the like

Friendly reminder that grenadiers really shouldn't need to carry their own rifle and that the XM25 was a step in the right direction. With a nade launcher that versatile and accurate, we can have him focus solely on his job and use it more often. Issue him shot rounds if you really need him to clear rooms or something, but keep a rifle off him so that he can carry more ammo.

Cased telescoped ammo from Textron needs "push through" extraction to work. You could build an upper for an AR lower that does that, but at what point does it stop being an AR?

Problem is that under German law, they're potentially liable if it is determined it was used "improperly" by whoever they sell it too. All that had to happen was for SASC to sign a meaningless agreement, which they refused to do.
Then when HK refused to ship to ATK because of it, ATK got the blame and got their contract cancelled.
It's a farce.

I really don't understand why the US military doesn't just build its own small arms production facilities and nationalize the patents of anything they want to make. Why keep sucking the cocks of unreliable foreign gun makers?

I miss it bros

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Stfu. It’ll be back like John Wick, weather it be an ECM+munition upgrade for the M4Gustaf or another bullpup

PCT?

Some people love to use the abbreviation alone. It stands for polymer cased telescoped.

Polymer primarily for the weight savings; not as light as old Kraut caseless but still a very significant reduction. Also polymer cases insulate the chamber from heat better than brass so the gun actually runs cooler. Downside is probably no reloading ever.
Cased telescoped means the round is seated within the case like a shot shell except with powder filled up around the sides. Makes the cartridge as short as it can possibly be.

Gotcha. I know what telescopic ammo is but have never seen the PCT abbreviation.

It was quite effective in the rolls it was pressed into

But like all things German, it was over engineered to hell and back, and was delicate

Too bad each grenade was a thousand eye watering dollars a fucking pop for what was supposed to be a way to suppress better than a LMG, on top of each fucking individual round needing to be hand fucking made, on top of a system that cost the military something like 35,000 dollars a pop. Fucking really HK?

I will never understand why they didn't just make the fucking thing use a digitally timed fuse instead of this spring loaded fin rotating gyroscope calculating laser guided range finder Frankenstein of a fucking weapon

It would have been as simple as
>All grenades have a set velocity from factory
>All issued grenades will share this velocity
>Launcher has setting for different grenade types since they obviously will weigh differently
>Laser range finder, acquires distance, calculates time it will take grenade to reach distance, tells grenade to go book in this exact time
>Process should take less than a second to account for user error
>POOMP
>Boom
>Hey presto, dead haji's

I don't know if it was the fucking scope, or if it needed to account for the shooter angling the grenade launcher for the maximum range, and maybe they did try something like this

But there is no. Fucking. Way they couldn't have dumbed the thing down with the technology they developed.

Having a whole AR system taken out of the equation drops a squad's ability to perform in the adaptive environment that the Middle East engages in. Having crowds and indoor shit will render him useless, if not equipped with a pistol (it'd be retarded to NOT give him something other than a big ol hunka chunka launcher).
So why not just keep him with the spare ammo his m8s need, AND some 20 or so 40mm rounds?

Tossing him that massive launcher is nice for long range engagements in an overwatch sense, but once its dug inside the hooses n' shit?

Rangers didn't particularly appreciate the low basic load ammo count for the weapon.

With that feedback and the pricetag, its a no brainer that its on the backburner now.

The ammo was only $1000 during the test deployment of the first 5 units. And it was only so expensive because it was all hand assembled. If it went into serial production the price would have dropped almost 20 fold.
And rotation arming is common, mature, more reliable, self correcting and allows for reliable arming distances without compromising use. It's better in basicly every way than digital timers.
Otherwise, the process for firing is exactly what you described. Press button, measure distance, add or remove distance if you want to, line up automatically-adjusted reticule with target, pull trigger.

Too bad all the automation in the world didn't mean jack shit for them to cut the price down to the 50$ a pop price tag they were claiming they could get with the grenades, and they still ended up needing to be hand assembled, while the overall quality absolutely plummeted with misfires and double feeds becoming more and more prevalent, which even in the best case scenario where the warhead didn't go off, destroyed the launcher which was still going for 35k, and seriously injured the operator

The rotational arming was only used because HK couldn't make a decent range finder. That's it. But as they found out, you can't shove enough computer to calculate the distance the grenade has traveled, cheaply, and without cutting corners. Rotational arming is mature and developed because of Missiles and Artillery, where spending that money is worth it, and you have the room to shove the silicone into. A digital timer would have been easier to manufacture, cheaper yet, and would have required fewer corners to cut

It was deployed 1/platoon. Not 1/squad. An M240 isn't exactly ideal for room clearing either, that doesn't mean they aren't useful.

Appreciate the correction, a few sources from briefings stated one per squad. May have been a thought or a mistake from illiterate NCOs.

Belt feds would certainly be more preferred over a GL for clearing.

Because of their Auto loader they are worthless.

Wow almost nothing in that was right. They never went to proper production. And of course they didn't because only a handful were ever fielded. Feeding 1400 XM25s in full deployment has economies of scale that 36 being toyed with can't compete with.
And there were 3 'serious' malfunctions out of 5900 rounds, none of which did anything more than give superficial injuries to the users, none of which occurred with the latest generation of the weapon, and all of which were found to be because of inadequate training.
Rotational arming is also used in every 40mm grenade as well. A digital timer is less reliable, does not correct for velocity changes, only provides a soft safety and would require more space if you wanted to actually have a hard safety.
What happens if you have a squib with a digital timer? What happens if something occluded the target just before firing and caught the grenade early? What happens if the soldier trips and accidentally shoots the ground in front of him? The grenade detonates in the users face, that is what happens. That is why we use the same concept on 40mm as well.

It's an easy mistake, they originally wanted to eventually buy 2 per infantry squad in the initial hype phase.
But they came to their senses when they actually tested and deployed them, for exactly the reasons you identified.

Because any engineer worth a shit works in the private sector.

That's how things go with the military. The AR would have been shitcanned if it weren't for McNamara ordering it to be adopted immediately.

There wasn't a huge aftermarket or tons of companies producing clones that rely on the dominance of the AR back then so the corruption is far worse.

It's how dumb shit like the HK M27 gets through when it was clearly not needed.