It’s been America’s rifle from Saigon to Somalia. But the M-16’s days appear numbered.
A new gun is coming to town.
One that can shoot around corners.
Half rifle, half grenade launcher, the new weapon is jazzed up with a battery-powered computer to help it track targets and see through smoke and darkness.
Although all that technology makes some soldiers wary, the Army hopes it will make the gun three to five times deadlier and lethal at half a mile away. Within a decade, this new rifle just might replace the M-16 in the hands of America’s front-line infantry soldiers.
“Our theme is `No Place To Hide,’ ” said Matthew Zimmerman, the Army’s program manager for the new gun. “With this system, the enemy cannot protect himself. He runs behind a tree, he runs in a ditch, he runs on a rooftop–it doesn’t matter. One or two shots, and he’s done.”
If, that is, the Army and the manufacturing team led by Alliant Techsystems of Hopkins, Minn., can make a computerized rifle light enough, rugged enough, good enough to unseat the M-16.
“I’m not optimistic about the potential,” said Duncan Long, an arms expert who has written extensively on rifles, including the M-16. “That said, I’m not excited about standing down range and having someone fire one at me.”
Any effort to introduce a new rifle to soldiers is a very big deal. Recruits are taught to treasure their guns from the day they enter basic training, explained Sgt. Gerard Martinez, who is stationed at the giant Fort Hood Army base near Killeen, Texas.
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“The M-16 is always with them,” he said. “They sleep with the weapon. They eat with the weapon. If the drill sergeant catches them without the weapon, they get in big trouble. What that teaches them is that their weapon is very important, because it can keep you alive.”
So why get a new gun when most agree the M-16 is a serviceable weapon?
The military minds behind the new gun are planning for the Army circa 2010, one that will fight very differently from today’s. Broadly, the theory is that smaller numbers of more independent, computer-carrying units can beat a bigger enemy by making communications more accurate and weapons more dangerous.
One part of that plan is the new gun, or “Objective Individual Combat Weapon.” “The planners’ objective is this individual combat weapon, so they coined it the Objective Individual Combat Weapon,” Zimmerman explains.
The OICW is actually two married weapons: two barrels sharing one trigger, though they can be separated and fired independently.
The lower barrel is a rifle that fires the standard NATO 5.56 mm cartridges (a .22-caliber bullet) the M-16 now shoots. Compared with the M-16, the rifle should shoot about as far (up to 1,650 feet) and about as fast (bullets fly at 2,800 feet a second).
The upper barrel fires 20 mm high-explosive grenades. The charges can be set to explode in midair at a preprogrammed distance, scattering shell fragments.
Atop it all sits a targeting sight with a laser range-finder and infrared night-targeting system. If the target’s too far away, the computerized system can communicate the enemy’s location to closer soldiers or artillery squads.
But how does it shoot around corners? In two ways.
If a soldier firing the OICW is approaching a corner, he can point the gun around it. The image in the gun sight would, in theory, be transmitted to a small “heads-up display” screen attached to the soldier’s helmet. The soldier can target and fire without poking his head out.
If the target’s lurking just behind a wall, the soldier can use the grenade launcher, aiming just where the wall ends. The laser calculates how far that is and automatically tells the high-explosive round. The round, which rotates at a steady rate once fired, simply counts out the number of turns required to travel the distance. Then it blows up, hurling jagged shrapnel around the corner.
This, the weapon’s developers say, is the revolutionary part. The new gun will overcome current limits on a soldier’s ability to see, target and blow up objects.
That should increase what the Army calls the “probability of incapacitation.” Today, in the heat of battle, a soldier firing an M-16 at a target 1,000 feet away has about a 15 percent chance of hitting it, Zimmerman said. With the OICW, that should rise to 50 percent.
“The combined system gives a capability to the individual soldier like the machine gun did in World War II,” said Michael Moore, program manager for Alliant Techsystems, the company developing the gun. “It’s the biggest development in small arms likely in the next 25 to 30 years.”
The high-tech targeting and grenades sounded pretty good to Sgt. Holloyal Dean, an Army cook who was trying to hit targets up to 1,000 feet away on a Fort Hood rifle range last week.
“The more the better, if it helps you shoot the target,” she said.
Skepticism surrounds any new weapon, particularly one with so much software connected to the hardware. Many gun buffs still argue fiercely the M-16 can’t match the older, heavier, .30-caliber M-14 rifle. Others, especially those trained on the M-16, seem partial to that gun.
The designers of the OICW admit they have several challenges to overcome, both in technology and perceptions. One is weight.
Ezell says that many soldiers don’t like shouldering heavy weapons all day, especially those warriors trying to stay fast and mobile. The OICW weighs 18 pounds, but designers hope to get it down to 14. A fully-loaded M-16 weighs just over 8.5 pounds.
But if critics make a comparison, Zimmerman says, they should weigh the OICW against the M-16 with its night sights and optional grenade launcher. That combination comes in at more than 16.5 pounds, he says, so the OICW should weigh less.
Critics also express concern about the recoil or “kick” on the grenade launcher. A 20 mm shell is a big round–about eight-tenths of an inch across–and firing it can be a jolt. But Zimmerman says various design tricks have lowered the recoil to about that of a 12-gauge shotgun.
By far, the biggest doubt is whether the high-tech weapon will be durable, especially its computerized parts. Lt. Paul Madrid, who runs one of the rifle ranges at Fort Hood, notes foot soldiers are tough on their weapons.
“We have . . . trouble getting soldiers not to lean on their weapons as walking sticks,” he says. With all the lasers, computers and grenade launchers, the OICW “might be great for the special ops guys, but the ordinary foot soldiers have trouble keeping their weapons clean.”
Zimmerman acknowledges it will be a challenge to show the OICW can withstand bad weather, mud, dirt and being dropped and banged around by soldiers. Yet the company is working to make the gun sturdy, he says.
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