Want to open a door in style? try a GREM for size!

troops wanted a door opener that could be used from a distance, and so the boffins came up with one!

www.strategypage.com...

No more door charges, no more mossberg shotties to blast the hinges off, nope us a GREM. (Grenade Rifle Entry Munition) Its a cool video, and it looks like a cool tool to use if you were under fire and still had to get in through a door - smart kit and a life saver no doubt!

Cool toy, ought to allow opening a door while the soldiers are still back behind cover.

While I wonder how long it'll take the LAPD to buy a few of these, I'll describe it for those with low-bandwidth connections.

Imagine a lawndart that slides into the barrel of an M-4 or M-6. Upon impact with the door, the 'lawndart' detonates a shaped charge to blow the door, sending what the trainer in the video described as "very little of that explosive force into the room".

Travellar,

Note that it looks like the trainer needs to 'brace' his students and the black woman (commander?) sends the projectile at a high tangent off to the side of the downrange target less than what, 50yds? away.

This is not a weapon for raw recruits and it violates two of what /used to be/ pretty hard-fast USAr rules:

1. Exposed load and fire 'ramming' sequence (imagine a musketeer in a modern firefight) with extended projectile clearance beyond the muzzle.
2. External warhead exposure.

Next, the door itself looks like single layer plywood and THERE ARE about five, fist-shaped, holes in it with further evidence of visible splinters entering the room (along with the door as it's own projectile) during the detonation sequence.

If you mask the door behind a wall (typical controled entryway tactic to channelize the approaches to as much as passage thru the portal and a short-LOS common occurence in Baghdads 'fenced in' yard enclosures) or elevation change, this thing is probably worthless.

If you go to double entry or steel doors (even steel core) with burgle-stop type bracing as another option to simple crosspieces, either the round will not kick. Or the amount of force required to breach the portal is going to be /vastly/ more than is necessary for all LIGHTER WEIGHT doors. Resulting in massively increased risk to any and all inside.

IMO, the best way to do this will always be to either make your own door (which requires one of those 'complex explosive breaching mechanisms' discussed in the movie) and follow it up-to-down with frags.

Or to put gas/smoke inside to flush the buggers out.

Or to send in a robotic platform with a frontal-entry charge and a simple (controlled overpen) handgun type secondary charge.

Either way, smart guerilla is going to NOT make it a fight about the door but the 'clump up' zones on either side. And you can damn well bet his explosive device has a helluva lot more fragmentation and blast effect than yours does.

Indeed, the principal thing you have to fight against is the constant auditory shock effect (big BANG!) of CQB as a means to ensure that you have the residual awareness and sense of safety to do just one thing well.

Press a plunger and frag them all.

This can be done in quickdig spider hole with a chair overtop that is actually AMONG the entry force.

There is no real reason to make a fight of it.

And hence there is no real reason to put men inside a confined, isolated, volume that can be rigged to shred them like a quisanart.


KPl.