New US multipurpose enhanced hand grenade

www.nextbigfuture.com...

Engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are working on the first new lethal hand grenade in more than 40 years, which is designed to give greater flexibility to the warfighter.

The multi-purpose hand grenade design will provide both fragmentation and blast overpressure more effectively and safely than its legacy counterparts. Once fielded, Soldiers will be able to select and use a hand grenade with different effects simply by flipping a switch.

Over the past five years, Picatinny engineers have been collaborating with Infantry School representatives, hand grenade cadre, as well as active duty Soldiers and Marines, to determine warfighter needs regarding hand grenades.

Our warfighter lost the capability of using an alternate lethal hand grenade when the MK3A2 concussion grenade was taken out of service in 1975 due to an asbestos hazard, leaving the M67 fragmentation grenade.

The grenade development at Picatinny is being performed by engineers with the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, or ARDEC

Mods please move to Military Projects forum if need be.

I guess it was a matter of time since they have been doing this with various rockets. I would think this is a waste of money in ways, maybe not. I don't think hand grenade use is very high in conflicts to need a newer one. I guess any little thing helps. I am always interested in the Military's new toys.

a reply to: iTruthSeeker

Our warfighter lost the capability of using an alternate lethal hand grenade when the MK3A2 concussion grenade was taken out of service in 1975 due to an asbestos hazard, leaving the M67 fragmentation grenade.

Asbestos hazard?

The combined effects of concussion (that pops skulls) and frag (that pin cushions skulls), grenades don't need a selector switch in the heat of combat; pull pin and throw, not select options... lulz

Imo, another over designed, higher cost alternative to what already 'works'.

a reply to: intrptr

Ya..you know lung cancer..asbestos. If you threw it, and it explodes you are breathing it's particles in..depending on where the wind blows.
Very bad stuff asbestos..not as bad as being blown up mind you.

The last thing we need is a grenade with asbestos in it. That could make someone seriously ill!

a reply to: intrptr

It's a KINDER gentler ..hand grenade.

originally posted by: MongolianPaellaFish
The last thing we need is a grenade with asbestos in it. That could make someone seriously ill!

The concern is for the soldier and manufacturing folks, not to mention friendlies moving through that area at a later time, not for the target of the grenade.

The real question is why are we still using nades?

a reply to: AlongCamePaul

Because they work quite well as a way to kill, injure, and stun enough guys on the other side to keep the first guy through the door or into an enemy trench from getting shot to death.

originally posted by: AlongCamePaul
The real question is why are we still using nades?

'Nades' been around at least since the civil war. Very specific role they fill.

You go round that corner, not me. You go into that room, not me. You go over that berm, not me.

I Know, lets send Nade.

originally posted by: cavtrooper7
a reply to: intrptr

It's a KINDER gentler ..hand grenade.

Chuckle of the day award goes to...

a reply to: intrptr

They've been around since early 700 AD

a reply to: intrptr

Actually they're coming up to at least a millennium in limited use.

Grenades have been with us a long time. So have torpedoes. We forget about them and reinvent them fairly frequently.

a reply to: AlongCamePaul

Hardly.

Tactically speaking, a hand grenade can nullify or mitigate for the effect of an enemy controlling choke points in a battle space, by allowing a single operative to clear a well defended room or small bunker/fortified emplacement, with a well thrown grenade, as opposed to having to expend lives to choke enemy firing positions by weight of corpses.

Further to that, it allows operatives holding a fortified territory to make best use of the terrain and any fortifications they have made, by creating areas where grenades can be deployed to quickly take several opposing units out of the game with a single, devastating blow, absent the need to lug heavy gear like RPGs and the like around.

a reply to: roguetechie

I should have said oldest effective, hi explosives haven't been around that long. Really big barrels of black power would do some damage, but then its no longer a 'hand' grenade.

originally posted by: AlongCamePaul
The real question is why are we still using nades?

Obviously you know nothing about these weapons, and purpose on the battlefield. The employment of a "Nade", or grenade, is quite basic, genius to a battlefield. I can't see why we aren't using them still. In my opinion, professional, and personal, grenades are still useful tools to get certain jobs done. Anyone who questions why, and how grenades are used, I refer you to this basic material to read to plainly understand.
www.globalsecurity.org...

originally posted by: intrptr
...grenades don't need a selector switch in the heat of combat; pull pin and throw, not select options... lulz

My first thought. The second one was "what sort of battery does it take".

Everyone wants to make something with lots of settings and features. And there are places for that...say, on an AWACS. But not so much for someone on the ground.

We always design stuff to be as minimally configurable as possible. If you can't use it in the dead of a rainy night, going over rough terrain at a dead run whilst being shot at, it's too complicated. Not that you CAN'T have settings, it just ought not to require any unless you're doing something odd.

Hopefully it's instantly obvious which way this thing's set by touch.

I'd have been happy with a mod that keeps the pins from being pulled unless you really mean it.

originally posted by: intrptr

You go round that corner, not me.

Just don't chuck one up a staircase.

a reply to: intrptr

Actually people were using Greek fire and other mixtures in "grenades" a thousand years ago around the Mediterranean in various places.

And the more explosive varieties pretty much as soon as black powder came into use around the world.

Keep in mind that technically black powder is a high explosive. The advent of much more controllable low explosive smokeless powders, as well as stick powders etc, is still a very young technology compared to the length of the black powder era.

Yes, on top of my other vices, I'm definitely one of those weapons and boomy stuff geeks.

a reply to: intrptr



As with my comments about the $400 billion spend on the F-35: The contracts go out to (sometimes favored) US firms, the elite owning those firms make easy money and better themselves substantially, a lot of taxes get paid up and down the line with that money, and the unskilled and semi-skilled American get jobs. And, oh, yeah, the product or upgrade may work as well as or maybe better than the old standby, grenades or other hardware. Who benefits the most?

a reply to: intrptr


The ancient Chinese used grenades fashioned from pottery.

Probably any early gunpowder experimenter discovered that application of the explosion principle long before someone thought of sticking it in a barrel with a bullet on top.