The OICW will be the most versatile weapon ever built. It can kill targets hidden around corners or dug in half a mile away.
The OICW will be the most versatile weapon ever built. It can kill targets hidden around corners or dug in half a mile away.
American soldiers going into battle in the next century may carry a weapon so advanced it will make today's assault rifle seem as primitive as the muskets fired at Bunker Hill.
Understand that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the venerable M16 rifle, its fraternal twin the M4 carbine or their trusty sidekick the M203 grenade launcher. It is the enemy who has changed. Military analysts say that in the future there will be fewer Desert Storms and more low-intensity operations, including missions to capture drug kingpins and to rein in regional warlords. Confronting these enemies will draw Army and Marine infantrymen into unwelcome new battlefields. Tomorrow's wars will be fought in the unmapped streets and alleys of the Third World's sprawling slums.
For several years, arms makers have been competing to design the rifle future soldiers would use. It had to be a weapon capable of winning on urban battlegrounds as well as in more familiar desert, forest and jungle terrain. The Pentagon dubbed its dream rifle the "objective individual combat weapon," or OICW.
The winning entry--submitted by an international team of companies led by Alliant Techsystems of Hopkins, Minn.--looks more like a prop from a Buck Rogers movie than anything you've seen at a rifle range. The modular, two-barrel weapon promises to turn foot soldiers into devastating, precision-firing platforms.
The OICW can be a dual- or single-barrel weapon. The removable top barrel hurls 20mm high-explosive air-bursting fragmentation rounds over the heads of hidden targets more than a half-mile away. The lower barrel shoots NATO-standard 5.56mm ammunition. These "kinetic" rounds provide accurate single-round or suppressive fire bursts at distances up to about 500 yards. A single trigger is linked to both barrels, by way of a laser-guided electronic fire-shot system as sophisticated as what you will find on a modern tank.
"OICW will leave no place for the enemy to hide on tomorrow's battlefield," says Don L. Sticinski, vice president of Alliant. Having won the $8.5 million competition, the company will now build seven OICWs and about 4700 rounds of test-fire ammunition. These will be used in an advanced technology demonstration program managed by the Joint Service Small Arms Program Office, at the Army's R&D center in Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.
Like current-generation infantry weapons, OICW will break down into modules for fast in-field parts swapping.
Zimmerman says that the key to the OICW's success in urban warfare is its electronic fire-control system, which enables the rifle to determine when its "smart" 20mm ammunition should detonate. Like conventional explosive rounds, these shells will detonate on impact, says Zimmerman. However, they also can be set to explode after passing through a wall or sheetmetal. This capability could be especially useful in Third World shantytowns, where abandoned or pirated cargo containers are popular building materials.
