Oh boy the uniform pattern bullshit is the stuff of legends

Soz they only come in California legal 5 round magazines because woke

This very question is what got me into modding video games.

Don't they already have this shit? Didn't that barrel fed automatic shotgun have grenade rounds like, a decade ago

Given that future doctrines may require "laser discipline"

It already exists for night operations with the prevalence of rifle mounted laser sights. But I do see more future investment for day time detection systems to counter proliferation of ir range finders

I'd personally be more invested in figuring out how to make thermals more widely available and methods of countering thermals as well.

All they gotta do is make sure they show it works under favorable self-determined lab settings that they can publish as official statistics then blame the soldiers doing field testing for not following the instructions manual.

Yeah but haven't you thought about the poor starving shareholders on wallstreet?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=XM29_OICW

It goes back at least to the OICW.

That thing is decades older, and was also supposed to have a built in, magazine fed, programmable / variable distance / variable mode grenade launcher in it.

Uh big surprise, it was too fucking heavy and made no practical sense.

M79? Seems to bulky and unwieldy for use. You know what they'll love? A weapon that's slightly lighter than a bowling ball and is as wieldable as Barrett's .50 cal.

Shit now that I think about it, it's basically a sawed off Barrett M82 but altered to shoot nades.

Here's a video of a random boot shooting an M82 from a standing position. That's gonna be the squad designated grenadier. Hating every moment on the field. https://www.military.com/video/guns/rifles/soldier-fires-barrett-50-cal-standing/1170809729001

Follow-up vid of some random guy also shooting from a standing position. Note that even though he's handling it like a champ his left arm was actually straining to bear the weight of the rifle and keep it steady. Now imagine that but you're trying to hit something relatively accurately

https://youtu.be/ApkT7Tifqe8?

Im a little late to the party on this one but there are a number of grenade rifles employed by the PLA.

They have a series of 35mm magazine fed grenade launchers that acts as an infantry support weapon, posessing anti-materiel and anti-infantry capability. The most recent one is designated QLU-11 and it has a rangefinding optic that works with programmable airburst munitions as well as normal 35mm grenades.

The QTS-11 is more or less an analogue to the US OICW program. It has a single shot, bolt action 20mm grenade launcher paired with its own rangefinder mounted above what is ultimately a short-barreled QBZ-03. It is believed to be the lightest of these kinds of weapons at around 7kg/15lb fully loaded and the specialized optic attached. The nifty thing about these is that instead of having one high-tech round that does everything it has multiple ammunition types that include both programmable "smart" rounds and traditional "dumb" rounds. The optic pairs with a headset that allows the shooter to look around corners but it can be removed and used with iron sights. Some reports suggest that around 50,000 have been made and that they have been deployed with some mechanized infantry units, which would make it the most successful of the OICW-like weapons. However, I have some doubts about those reports because these rifles haven't been spotted very much, if at all since the mid-2010s. Personally? I think the whole concept has been shown to be a dead-end and that weapons like this just aren't useful enough to justify the downsides of weight, safety, and cost.

also heres a picture of Xi jinpeng holding one

Dunno, if it's an unwieldy 14 pounds I'll still call it as I call the u.s possible future choice.

This is a fair point, however the programmable infantry airburst rifle concept runs into issues those don't, largely because of the mode of usage and size.

One of the problems with the OICW and XM25 systems was that fitting the electronics that would allow for the programming of the rounds meant there was less space for the explosive charge. Something like a 105mm artillery round would sacrifice a small fraction of the space for the same capability compared to say, a 25mm round. Unlike artillery, which is static when it is being used and fires a number of rounds at the same target, infantry airburst systems are used much more dynamically. They are expected to be banged around and have to repeatedly "re-zero" targets in rapid sucession.

Basically, it works in big guns because theyre big and the technology is matured, and it doesn't work all that well in small guns because theyre small and have additional design challenges.

I

1: generally don't think the average boot will be able to utilize the feature effectively in actual combat situations with a peer military force

2: am extremely skeptical that a profit seeking company won't in the name of trying to grift more money try to reinvent the wheel and deliver some sort of over-engineered bullshit that works like 1 out of 8 times.

It doesn't work, the xm25 was supposed to be able to use a range finder and program each round before firing, but they couldn't get the fuses to work right