The XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement weapon system is now in development. But by this time next year, the system might have moved into low-rate initial production and if this is the case, will lose the experimental “X” prefix.
Lt. Col. Shawn Lucas, the PEO Soldier program manager for individual weapons at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., said the XM25 is currently within the “engineering and manufacturing development phase,” not yet ready for fielding.
“That’s where we’re developing the subsystems, which might be the weapon, the hearth control, and the programmable ammunition,” he said. “[We’re] integrating all of it to interact on the system level in order to meet the necessities the user has asked for. If we do this, we might look to enter production.”
It’ll be about August of next year, he said, when the military would ask decision makers to maneuver to a “milestone C” decision with the system. So they can let them start low-rate initial production, or LRIP, and manufacture a bit greater than 1,100 of the weapons, in addition to the needed ammunition. The LRIP decision may help prove out manufacturing processes for the weapon, the fireplace control and the ammunition. Additionally, those systems would then be used to do operational and live-fire testing.
Additionally, he said when that occurs they’d do “type-classification” at the system.
“We’d take the X off,” he said. “It’s now not experimental; it’d be the M25.”
The XM25 was called “the Punisher” by most of the Soldiers who initially evaluated it in Afghanistan, in November 2010. It allows Soldiers to interact defilade targets, those behind a barrier, protected against oncoming weapons fire. The system provides a bonus over traditional weapons.
“With traditional direct-fire forms of systems that shoot in essentially a straight line, that enemy combatant would have cover from those varieties of weapons,” Lucas said.
The XM25 measures the space to the enemy’s protective barrier, and will then program the round to detonate a user-adjustable distance past that, allowing Soldiers to lay an air-bursting round directly above the enemy’s head, inside their protected area, even though they’re behind a wall or inside a building.
“There’ s quite a few art and science in doing that, so that you can get the air-bursting munitions exactly where you would like to be able to have the intended effect,” Lucas said.
A Soldier may use the XM25′s capability to decide that a wall protecting an enemy is a few 100 meters away. The Soldier then might adjust that distance by a meter or two, so the round will travel within the air past the wall, and instead detonate directly above the intended target.
“Whoever was behind the wall would get quite a lot of fragments rained down on them,” Lucas said. “It’s a leap ahead, something that hasn’t ever before been resident inside the squad, or really our small tactical formations, squads, platoons or companies. That’s the facility to interact, and feature effects on targets which are in defilade.”
The XM25 fires a programmable air-burst round that determines the gap it travels according to the variety of times it rotates after leaving the barrel of the weapon. The system includes both the weapon, the rounds, and an absolutely-integrated day and night fire control.
Right now, Lucas said the military is operating to make more improvements to the design of the XM25, especially to the hearth control system. He also said there was a variety of feedback concerning battery life, weight, and the dimensions of the magazine.
Were a milestone decision to come back in 2014, he said, much of 2015 can be spent testing the system, including initial operational tests, in addition to the live-fire tests. They’d also have to do weapons qualification, and additionally qualify the fireplace controls and ammunition produced off the producing lines.
“Assuming success in all of these events, then you’d have the ability to field a unit that’s then going to take those into combat operations towards the tip of 2015,” he said.
Lucas said he expects the weapon may be fielded to all brigade combat teams, in addition to units in U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Special Forces detachments, and Ranger Regiments.
The cost for the XM25 and the rounds it fires is dear today, Lucas said, since the weapons and ammunition are being manufactured by hand. But with development of automated production facilities, he said the cost is predicted to return all the way down to about $35,000 for the weapon and fire control system, and about $55 per round.
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