Your secondary charge will be pretty ineffective with nothing to contain it, which is why soft-launch missiles use rocket motors — you'd have to use a much larger charge (more flash, more noise, more risk to the firer) to compensate for the charge not being contained and directed.

Soft launch followed by RAP would work, but you'd have a very expensive solution that would not be very effective at short range, and might require a sensor to be effective at longer ranges. I was actually involved in a project like this in 40mm with China Lake at one point; our initial conclusion was it was…

Pretty much, yep (except that SCAR was only ever a SOCOM program, and even SOCOM is walking away from it). I was arguing for XM25 to die eight to ten years ago. It's the right technology, but the wrong form factor — we needed less performance in order to maintain multi-purpose weapon capability, but some of the…

Please.

Min safe arming distance — probably 15 to 18 meters if its a typical dual-safe fuze.

Prox is not time delay; the two are different concepts. I suspect the SAGM round has an impact fuze to go off if is strikes a target without the prox initiating.

The XM25 fires a medium velocity short 25mm round. The recoil from that round is too great to function as an underslung weapon — the recoil path needs significant mitigation and needs to translate directly into the firer's shoulder to be fired safely. It's why the XM25 is so large and heavy despite having only a…

The XM8 was never the XM29's conventional half, despite the "official" story. The XM8 was a re-skinned G36 because it wasn't possible to make an effective stand-alone carbine quickly from the XM29 lower. The XM25 is based on the significantly rewvised XM29 up, but it had to be scaled up from the original 20mm to 25mm…

You never hear the round that kills you.

The AA12 is a blast to shoot. It's not really useful for anything more practical than turning money into noise, but still lots of fun.

I know, right? Think of the independent contractors!

Great article as usual, Doug.

Trabant. Go ugly early.

Go Enzo!

What, no The Art of Racing in the Rain?

Surprising that he's literate, isn't it?

Wait — snakes have nipples?

Yeah, I'm waiting for a "Hobbit edit" just like the "Phantom Edit."

Key West Agreement. USAF is never, never, never going to let the USA have an armed fixed wing aircraft again, or else they'll be proved obsolete. As a service, the USAF is obsessively paranoid about ever having aircraft under direct control of ground commanders. It's a cultural thing that dates back to the formation…

1. True, but will never happen due to the Key West Agreement.