Monday, March 9, 2015

Praxis: Army Testing Stackable Grenades for Infantry; Mini-Drones Win Soldier Praise at Army Experiment; U.S. Army Tests Soviet-Designed Rocket Launcher

U.S. Army testers recently evaluated a new type of hand grenade that allows soldiers to connect up to three sections of explosive for a more powerful blast. The Scalable Offensive Hand Grenade offers conventional soldiers a new capability. Unlike the standard fragmentation grenade, this design offers mainly a blast effect that can be doubled or tripled to suit the job. It has also been fielded to U.S. Special Operations Command since 2010.
Mini Drones Win Soldier Praise at Army Experiment.
U.S. Army Tests Soviet-Designed Rocket Launcher.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The rocket launcher can be used to devastating effect. I'm surprised it's taken the US so long to look at possible adoption.

the Plinker said...

I wonder how long it will be before these new toys start showing up at your friendly neighborhood cop house. Maybe we should start a pool.

Michael Gilson said...

I'm pretty sure there were WW2 stick grenades designed so that you could screw the warheads together on a single stick.

Anonymous said...

Michael, Bandoleer Torpedoes might be what you are thinking of. They are/were used to breach beach defenses and barbed wire. They could be screwed together to be as long as needed to reach the other side, and ere quite effective in their time.

Michael Gilson said...

No, it wasn't bangalores. I may have been misremembering the one where they would bundle 6 grenade heads around a stick grenade. Still, I was sure there was one with female threads on one end and male threads on the other, but I couldn't find one in a web search. I even tried checking other stick grenade users like Japan and Russia.

The British had the Gammon Grenade, an impact fuse on a bag that could be filled with different amounts of plastic explosive to suit the situation.