PEO Soldier’s high tech products have been receiving a lot of praise lately! Both the XM25 ‘smart’ munitions and the Individual Gunshot Detection (IDG) system have been named by Popular Sciences as among the “Best of What’s New 2009.”
This came at the heels of a recent announcement that the XM25 munitions had also been named by Time Magazine as one of the “50 Best Innovations of 2009.”
Everyone at PEO Soldier, and especially the offices of those two products, are extremely proud and grateful to see recognition for the work being done to keep Soldiers safe and equip them to be the best in the world.
The XM25 munitions are in ‘stellar’ company, featured alongside such items as NASA’s spacecraft, and teleportation technology. What’s so innovative about the XM25 round is that, as Time writers put it, “you fire a bullet, and it explodes where you want it to.”
The XM25 Counter Defilade Engagement System
High Explosive Air Bursting (HEAB) round for the XM25
The rounds have been designed for the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) Weapon System. Using the XM25, Soldiers will be able to engage enemy forces located in the open and “in defilade,” which means behind cover such as walls, rocks, trenches or inside buildings.
If you are a fan of the XM25, you can vote for the importance of the innovation on Time’s site. At this time, the XM25 round is coming in at a 65. Cast your vote!
- The Soldier-worn Individual Gunshot Detection (IDG) system
Not to be outdone, the IGD system gives Soldiers an extra level of situational awareness for countering snipers. With the IGD, Soldiers can find the direction and distance to the shooter a tenth of a second after the first shot is fired. The IGD is a Soldier worn, self-contained, passive, acoustic system based on a small, rugged, light-weight, low-power sensor/signal processing core that has the capability to detect and localize the source of small arms fire.
The system is tuned to detect shockwave and muzzle blast signatures while screening out other acoustic events to determine azimuth and range to the shooter. Each sensor provides a gunfire detection solution to the individual soldier.
Unfortunately, you can’t vote to show your support for the IGD. But you can find out more by visiting the PEO Soldier website.
Boy, that XM 25 seems impressive, but I just have visions of the thing not working correctly after a deployment or two. There are way too many moving parts and fine tuned electronics for my comfort level. An infantryman’s weapon should be simple, reliable, lethal, and very tough. If you can make it light weight, well then that is perfect.
If you want to get technological, then make some 40mm that is ultra-lethal and has some reach. Or if you can make a basic grenade launcher to shoot this 25mm round, that would be cool too. But I certainly hope these 25 mm rounds are equal to, if not better than the 40mm rounds. I would tend to think that size and payload factors would favor the 40mm in lethality, but I could be wrong. Just my thoughts and good for PEO for getting some recognition.
Is the XM25 intended to be a replacement for 40mm grenade launchers? In that respect, it appears to be an improvement in all areas except for munition lethal radius. I question whether a 25mm grenade, even airburst, with a relatively small casualty radius, can deliver enough of a punch for use in a semi-automatic shoulder fired weapon. I would have liked to have seen the weapon developed in a larger caliber, say 40mm. I suspect that most soldiers would agree this to be a good trade-off, given that such a weapon in order to accomodate the larger caliber, would probably need to be non-magazine fed (single shot) with a reduced range and lesser ammunition basic load.